Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
Weird thread.
Without quoting every post made thus far, I'll just throw out some random bullets.
1. Dennis had the most remarkable career of anyone in the history of the business. He should be an ET'er wet dream. 2k to 200mil in 16 years.
2. The awesome success of Dennis and a few other big play traders like Seykota or even Ricky Barnes is not trend following itself but in adding to the position. I'd imagine, over an infinite sample that trend following systems using constant one unit position sizing, fare no better than mean reverting systems. However Dennis wouldn't just buy a modest amounts of beans on a breakout-he'd go all in. And as soon as that profit produced enough money to margin even more-he'd double up. And it wasn't all breakouts bs. His biggest percentage trade-it took him from a few mil to eight figures as a 26 year old-was shorting sugar into a tulip-mania spike high. Just think how sophisticated a 26 year old floor trader in Chicago had to be to even partake in a New York trade over the telephone doing size circa mid-70's.
I was in the Bond pit during the mid 80's when he made 50mil catching the rally from the high 50's to par. Scott Mistretta who was C&D's floor broker in the Bonds would bid the market on air through resistance levels. Dennis was trading 200 lots at the infancy of the move and had 5000 on by the end.
3. Neiderhoffer (and I'm the guy here who knew weeks before it was published that Matador had folded) might be a very bright guy but his trading strategy was simplistic and flawed. Clearly. And if indeed he sold it as something more cerebral or discretionary than just a short puts index fund, then he was fraudulent. He certainly wasn't a trader. He just sold naked far otm premium. That's fine-for four years better that than buying puts-but it doesn't prove a fund manager to be some prescient speculator. I mean in retrospect the guy looks like a HUGE duchebag. He was short puts that are STILL 250 ES points deep in the money. Hell at least Lehman made it to late 2008-Vic was done on a break before the new Oct/07 high was even made!!