Trend Follower John Henry Assets Drop 80% In Year!!!

Quote from Rodney King:


.. Well, I've done some things I'm proud of in my life, [/B]
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"I've done a lot of things in my life I ain't too proud of, and the things I am proud of are disgusting." - Mo Szyslak from The Simpsons


for a nobody like me the schwager thing sounds like a big deal.
 
Quote from dogman:

for a nobody like me the schwager thing sounds like a big deal.

.. Let's go back 20 years in time, to when Schwager was preparing his book. It's pre-web, and long, long pre-hedgefund craze. There's no elitetrader, no chatboards. No one among the public cares much about traders or funds. There are no looky-lou rankings of top-paid fund managers in the NY Post. And Schwager is just one of many financial journos looking to hustle up an interesting book/article/column. Exactly why Schwager's book became so popular -- I'm not really sure. Had it disappeared quietly into history, as did hundreds of other financial books written in that era, no one would give a hoot about what firms were profiled in the book. My best guess is -- he made a good decision by focusing on personalities ("So, how did you first get started in trading") rather than on strategies. Smart guys will buy books that help them trade, but dumb guys will also buy "People Magazine" type books. And at the end of the day, there are more dumb guys than smart.
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Quote from marketsurfer:
very interesting and telling. let's hope JWH went to Robbins for personal issues and not trading issues---your post makes me think its trading issues. what's the source of this information?
thanks!
surf
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I have Robbin's tapes....and he mentions it in detail. At one point JWH couldn't even go to his office, he was so bummed-out. And no, it WAS for trading issues....specifically his fund performance. Every trade was turning to mush....and driving him crazy.
 
Quote from syswizard:

I have Robbin's tapes....and he mentions it in detail. At one point JWH couldn't even go to his office, he was so bummed-out. And no, it WAS for trading issues....specifically his fund performance. Every trade was turning to mush....and driving him crazy.
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interesting. does robbins mention JWH by name, or just say "billion dollar money manager" or something like that??

surf
 
Quote from Rodney King:

...My best guess is -- he made a good decision by focusing on personalities ("So, how did you first get started in trading") rather than on strategies. Smart guys will buy books that help them trade, but dumb guys will also buy "People Magazine" type books. And at the end of the day, there are more dumb guys than smart.
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Quote from psytrade:

This evades the fact that Steve Cohen, Druckenmiller, Lescarbeau... etc don't discuss their strategies with anyone anyways.
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I would have to agree with psytrade. I would think that most notable traders would be reluctant to openly discuss strategies that they are currently employing in any meaningful detail. My guess is that such topics are best approached tangentially by a writer when interviewing a trader. Personally, I hold the Schwager Wizard books in some regard.

For the most part, the only people I am aware of who would openly and publicly discuss strategy in any meaningful detail are vendors. And that's a big caveat emptor, good buddy.
 
Quote from Thunderdog:

I would think that most notable traders would be reluctant to openly discuss strategies that they are currently employing in any meaningful detail. My guess is that such topics are best approached tangentially by a writer when interviewing a trader. Personally, I hold the Schwager Wizard books in some regard.

.. Right, that was what I was getting at, perhaps too circuitously. Of course the traders interviewed by Schwager didn't allow a meaningful peak under the tent -- why would they? But Schwager (somewhat to my surprise) published the book anyway. To be clear, I like him personally, and wish him well; I just didn't think much of the book and was surprised his publisher put it out despite the thin content -- which proves I don't understand publishing, given how successfully the book sold. My remark was intended more as, the smart guys will read books specific trading strategies (risk arb, or dispersion trading, or whatever), the dumb guys will read bio/color/human-interest books.
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Quote from Thunderdog:

I would have to agree with psytrade. I would think that most notable traders would be reluctant to openly discuss strategies that they are currently employing in any meaningful detail. My guess is that such topics are best approached tangentially by a writer when interviewing a trader. Personally, I hold the Schwager Wizard books in some regard.

For the most part, the only people I am aware of who would openly and publicly discuss strategy in any meaningful detail are vendors. And that's a big caveat emptor, good buddy.
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Most of the trader's Schwager interviewed in the first 2 books fell into two camps. Trend followers (Dennis, Seykota, Eckhardt, Hite) or quasi swing/scalpers (Jones, McKay, Gelber, Baldwin). Only CRT (Ritchie) resemble the modern "trader."

There were really no "rules" for the trend traders to discuss, eh? Load up on the right side of a trend and get rich, load up on the top of a trading range and get chopped. Simple.

Today's fund manager is much shadier. He's a leveraged premium seller ala' vic. Or a leveraged carry-trade artist. Or a leveraged yield curve monkey. Or a race the tape on not yet quite public news SAC. Or a load up the order book derivatives bot.

The guy's doing those trades ain't talking. And in all honesty what could they really say that would be insightful, entertaining or reproducible for the general public.

Here's our interview with Sergio, "Serge when did you first program your auto-spreader to buy the cheapest to deliver 2 year when the green eurodollar strip goes bid?" Exciting stuff, lol.

There's no more secrets to speculation than there are secrets to poker. After a while there's rules that are based on nothing more than rough probabilities. Sometimes your gut may tell you to fade those rules. Position sizing, discipline, diversification, blah, blah. We should all know what it takes. The application is another story.

Many in Schwager's books fell on hard times later.

It happens. Randomness giveth and taketh.

Actually that should be the PRIMARY nugget gained......
 
Quote from Rodney King:

... My remark was intended more as, the smart guys will read books specific trading strategies (risk arb, or dispersion trading, or whatever), the dumb guys will read bio/color/human-interest books.
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Do you really think that most of the traders interviewed were that technically savvy? I recall there were some traders who focused primarily on fundamentals, however, as I recall (and it has been some years since I had read the books), the technically oriented traders did not all uniformly come across as overly sophisticated. Intelligent, smart and lucky, to be sure. But I got the impression (to the best of my recollection), that most of them employed sound, basic trading principles. Perhaps they were downplaying? I know that the devil is in the details, but I didn't really think that there are that many books out there on those details for the "smart" guys. If there are, could you please direct me to them? I'm not all that smart, but I can fake it for stretches at a time.

The "bio/color/human-interest" stuff is not without merit. Trading is a lonely business, especially for those who trade from home. Reading how notably successful traders have dealt with hardship as well as success as they travelled up the learning curve provides good context that might not otherwise be available for isolated traders. There are other useful tidbits, but I won't pretend that I learned to trade using Schwager's Wizard books (or any other books, for that matter).

Once again, could you please advise what you think the smart guys are reading? I'm not being facetious.
 
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