Niederhoffer new book

I guess most people here only do successful trades and don't need to read a book by a guy who has seen the abyss and climbed back. My two cents is that this guy has traded with the best, traded in every market, tested every pattern, won and lost with every form of risk management out there - and still every day goes to work and trades and has apparently made it all back and then some.

Seems like every chapter in a book by this guy is going to be a gold mine. I hope so since I plan on going into the city and buying the book tomorrow.
 
Quote from Vishnu:

Why someone should read Victor's book:

a. he TESTS everything, every statement out there about the markets, including a lot of the theories and gurus talked about in these message boards. As a trader its worthwhile getting his take on the testing of market theories, particularly since he's been doing it for some 35 years.
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That sounds good but when you step into reality you find it isn't as clean cut as you think. For example, a few months back on MSN there was an article from him saying how head and shoulder formations don't work.

The thing that he and his co-writer sidestepped neatly was that "a head and shoulder is in the eye of the beholder". What I mean is what you think is a head and shoulder may not be what I call a head and shoulder. And how you might trade a head and shoulder is not how I might play it.

So to come out and say what they did in that article was simply laughable.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Lord Keynes summed it up well:" The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
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This has always been a great one, however it should have said that the markets are always rational within the terms of the markets, they only appear to be irrational from our point of perception.
" Chronic fader and adder... any monkey can do that. Especially with OPM. And $110M ain't nearly enough to keep butting heads with the markets every day.

So what... he's eccentric. Why do people confuse eccentricity with intelligence? He's an idiot for a trader. Risk control and money management is not a part of his vocabulary or his writings - and that, my friends, makes him a crappy trader. If he's not right, there is no end point, strategy, or procedure to pull his testes out of the fire."

Agree Bone,there is nothing as good as right place , right time, being available and totaly in synch with the reality of the moment. That's my perception of him. Remember that gold bug guy Jim Dines, he's probaly coming around again. True genius however is timeless, Einstein, Mozart, Michelangelo. Vic strikes me as a gambler with an ego. That said one never knows what tidbit of value one might glean from what he has to say. How many books have we read that had one idea that altered our way of thinking.
 
Quote from Banjo:


Remember that gold bug guy Jim Dines, he's probaly coming around again.
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Just thought I'd mention that you got your facts wrong on Jim Dines. Yep...a gold bug. Rode gold and silver back in the 70's through absolutely huge gains....gold was up perhaps 10 fold, silver up even more. What you don't know is he got out.

Perhaps you'd be interested to know he did the same thing with internet stocks. Got bullish early, rode them for huge gains, got out and bearish.

I know the point of your post wasn't to knock Jim Dines. Clearly you don't know much about him. I'd hate to think though that readers of your post went away with an untrue impression of Dines.

OldTrader
 
Quote from Babak:



It would have been wise to remember what SA exports and what the chart/fundamental of said commodity is going fwd.
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Babak, you don't think I overlooked something that obvious, do you? In fact I had a long gold position as a partial hedge to offset some of the pain from the Rand's move.

I'm not going to go into this off topic trade too much, but I should point out that even with gold soaring, I didn't expect the Rand to do the same, as the S.A. miners' long term labor contracts are denominated in Rand, therefore giving the mining corperations a huge incentive to keep the Rand weak, regardless of gold's price.... look, it's complicated, but just rest assured that I'd never overlook something so obvious as gold exports.
 
Oldtrader, you're correct, didn't mean to knock him, was just an offhand comment. Thanks , wouldn't want anyone to have the wrong impression of him from an unclear post either.
 
Quote from Babak:




The thing that he and his co-writer sidestepped neatly was that "a head and shoulder is in the eye of the beholder".
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Well, thats his point exactly. Conceivably, we have all the data right in front of us. How come people refuse to backtest this?

He's not going to be right on every call, but his insights are worth looking into. For instance, today's MSN column on how IPOs manage their earnings prior to IPO. Or his insight from a few weeks ago that companies that restate their earnings outperform their peers. Or his paper from 1970 that buying the market after catastrophic news produces better results than random buying.

The guy has devoted close to 40 years studying the markets. He's a trader's trader and puts more money to work every day than most of us do in a year. That makes his book worth reading.
 
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