Niederhoffer In Trouble..... Again !!

[Rodney King]

Quote from Ivanovich:

He's had 3 aliases today alone,

I'm not sure what banning Surf's IP means. He has offices in NY and Philadelphia, plus his city apartment and country home, and he could post from the local Starbucks if he wanted. Am I missing something?

 

[Ivanovich]

Takes me two seconds to ban the username and delete the posts. If he wants to shill for himself (and others), people in the thread have a right to know it's him doing it.

Speaking of which, YOUR IP and thoreau777's have an interesting similarity in their host, too.

 

[thoreau777]

Quote from Ivanovich:

Tim can't respond to you anymore. He was Marketsurfer's 4th username today.

Ivanovich, thank you in earnest for responding. Have a wonderful three day weekend! And also to all my new friends on this website, have a safe and restful President's Day. I encourage you to study the price changes today and yesterday on the /ES on all relevant intervals. Reminds one of the rackets strategist who hits a few drop shots in a row and then lobs over the head when opponent is drawn in. Testing this in the market one finds that the strategy does not work. What other sports gambits might there be that the market has encapped either knowingly or with its invisible evil hand ? Many checker gambits are like this also and doubtless in chess.

 

[Chuck Krug]

I have a question for Victor Niederhoffer:

Why don't you just daytrade? There are dozens of liquid markets where you can throw a lot of futures contracts around and a lot of very liquid stocks.
Thanks.

 

[Anaconda]

Quote from thoreau777:

tim, thanks for your question. I believe that Victor did exercise all proper risk metrics after the cabal collectively and deliberately withheld precious monies that were promised. In 1997, had even one trading day been permitted the more, there would not have been any blowup.

Also, the losses in 2001 to 9/11 and in 2003, 2006 were managed well.

In 2007, the year of the second "blowup", there was just no way to predict the irrational disjointed prices in the autumn. As you will recall, that was the end of the bull and the start of the financial meltdown.

I will include the "blowup" of Victor's funds in 2007 as part of the financial meltdown that took prices to the lows of SP 500 666 in March of 2009. That was a once in a century event.

Nassim asserted his book, "What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives."

Nassim and I agreed that the events of 2007-2009 removed the top feeders like Bear, Lehman, Merrill, AIG, and other financial titans. It is unfair to assume that Victor could have done anything differently, as he did not have access to the Fed window.

So Tim, I have addressed the two reasons behind Victor's publicized "blowups". If a careful scrutiny is asserted, the evidence of culpability points away from Victor and to events that he could not control or foresee. We could study various examples in the world of sports to also arrive at vindication.

So have you invested with Vic yet? All that admiration, why not cash in on it?

 

[thoreau777]

Quote from Chuck Krug:

I have a question for Victor Niederhoffer:

Why don't you just daytrade? There are dozens of liquid markets where you can throw a lot of futures contracts around and a lot of very liquid stocks.
Thanks.

Dear Chuck,

First, I am only am able to admire Victor Niederhoffer from afar. The suggestion that I am he is quite flattering, but I can only approach, not reach, greatness. Comparing myself to him is like comparing a three year old who holds his first nerf football to the likes of a Terry Bradshaw or a Roger Staubach. But thank you. His accomplishments rank at the level of historical figures remembered a century or more later. Your question of why Victor does not daytrade and throw futures contracts on various stocks is an articulate and salient question. I can only speculate that likely his past experiences in the early 1980s and in 1997-8 steer his attention elsewhere into mostly non individual stocks in U.S. markets. You need to understand his expertise is to delve away from non-systemic risk. He was involved in stocks he thought were liquid before, so I believe he has a proclivity to broad instruments such as /ES futures contracts. The term "Daytrader" is also nebulous. Victor indeed is keen to hold intraday as well as overnight. I am animated by a desire to apply systematic, tested reasoning to improve our understanding, not by appeals to authority or the transition of charts. Another nice example is contained in Jane Marcet. She says, consider a farmer with just one blade of seed corn left. There is a complex interaction when the farmer is faced with such scarcity. This should help answer your question. I believe Victor wishes to not be crudely "throwing around a bunch of futures contracts" as you suggest. It is so far from his methodology. It is rigorously quantitative, and as he alluded to before, based on philosophy. He suggested that the philosophy of barbecue in the South contribute as much to erudition of the understanding of the markets. Again, I encourage you to read his book which would elucidate much of your inquiries. But I thank you for your question.

 

[thoreau777]

Quote from Anaconda:

So have you invested with Vic yet? All that admiration, why not cash in on it?

My dear Anaconda,

Thank you for your question. You could say that I do have money invested with him. That would not be an incongruous statement. Such rich questions that if properly validated or refuted give information of a fruitful nature. Have an insightful weekend.

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from Ivanovich:

Speaking of which, YOUR IP and thoreau777's have an interesting similarity in their host, too.

Interesting. Maybe the guy at the next desk posts on E'trader -- and I thought he just watched pr0n all day...

 

[hughb]

Quote from thoreau777:

Friends, I assure you that I am not "surfer" or any other banned user in the past. I believe that the moderator perhaps was given incorrect information. I spoke just now on the telephone to Elite Trader, and a very kind gentleman reactivated my account after acertaining that I am not indeed guilty of being any past "banned identities". Again, I am not a previously banned user.

That said, I must reiterate the robust trading results of Victor Niederhoffer, and how we all could become superior traders on his level if we seek to emulate his style. This is why I wrote so passionately on this subject.

His trading is perfectly sound and logical. Again, he cannot be blamed for his "blow-outs" as some will call them. They were entirely due to member banks nervously withdrawing credit lines on during his drawdown periods and the aforementioned black swan events. If the banks had remained faithful to their obligations and extended proper credit, his funds would never have collapsed, and he would still be on the front pages of all the finance newspapers around the world.

That Vic can not be blamed for his blowouts is a great relief to me, implying that I can not be blamed for my own. It also seems to imply that my trading is perfectly sound and logical.


Question 1:
With these two implications firmly in mind, where do I apply to get back the money lost in the blameless blowouts of my perfectly sound trading?

Question2:
Have you taken Anaconda's suggestion of investing your money with Vic, (and I guess question 3), are you laughing all the way to the bank?

 

[BigSalad]

Quote from thoreau777:

...I will include the "blowup" of Victor's funds in 2007 as part of the financial meltdown that took prices to the lows of SP 500 666 in March of 2009. That was a once in a century event.

Nassim asserted his book, "What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. ...

To paraphrase the great philosopher Forrest Gump: Outliers happen.