Victor Niederhoffer in Vogue Magazine??

[EPrado]

Quote from nokomisjeff:

What's the biggest hit you've ever taken in a day? Do you trade 2000 cars at a whack? You only wish that you had the stones to even step up to the plate instead you waste the time of others making 10,000 posts to this forum.

Everyone here might give Vic a hard time, but he still puts out a bigger line than 99.9% of the posters on ET.

What the hell does size matter. Whoop di do, he had a position on of 2000 contracts. The bottom line is the results. He is no different than a 10 lot guy who blew out his account.

This discussion isnt about size....or we can compare him to what Paulson manages these days. Makes VN look like a mosquito.

Perhaps if VN wasn't so leveraged trading big size he would have survived the downturn in the stock market. He obviously was trading way beyond his means.

 

[Thunderdog]

Quote from nokomisjeff:

Could you quantify that, or is that merely your opinion....I happen to know otherwise.

Excellent. Then please answer the following:

Quote from Thunderdog:

...it would be interesting to know how he did in percentage terms on a net basis after factoring in the blow-ups. Surely you will agree that such an all-encompassing number would be more representative of his true performance than limiting performance claims only to the good years where the mega risks undertaken had not yet come to fruition. And so, what is the net result in percentage terms?

 

[EPrado]

Quote from nokomisjeff:

Could you quantify that, or is that merely your opinion....I happen to know otherwise.

Did he not close his fund down twice? Once during the Asian mess...and then 2 summers ago?

 

[Pekelo]

Since nobody has arrived at the same conclusion, here is mine:

Quote from Pekelo:

So it seems...

...that the reason several people here don't think Vic is the greatest trader because (beside the 2 blow ups) his record seems to show that there isn't much trading, but simply putselling and overleveraging. Both periods showed that his funds had a similar equity curve than the market's except with a 2-5 leverage.
In the second timeframe, his leverage increased from 2 to 5....
Market stayed flat or went up? The fund had an excellent return. Market dropped? The fund went bust....

There it is, in a nutshell....

 

[jem]

All I want to see is an end to self promoting bullshit without the facts to back it up.

You can't tell me you are a great trader if you were selling premium and you blew up at least twice.

Selling premium, self promoting and extracting management fees and profits prior to blowing up is a a con game or damn close to it in my opinion.

To support my belief I can point to LTCM, VN and Countrywide, WAMU etc.

To further support it I provide this fact.
Goldman was buying insurance on their short puts from AIG. And to manage their counter party risk they purchased two presidential administrations and congress.

They knew you can't sell premium forever. I would argue that it any fund manager selling options should understand the options risk profile.

 

[EPrado]

Quote from Pekelo:

Since nobody has arrived at the same conclusion, here is mine:



...that the reason several people here don't think Vic is the greatest trader because (beside the 2 blow ups) his record seems to show that there isn't much trading, but simply putselling and overleveraging. Both periods showed that his funds had a similar equity curve than the market's except with a 2-5 leverage.
In the second timeframe, his leverage increased from 2 to 5....
Market stayed flat or went up? The fund had an excellent return. Market dropped? The fund went bust....

There it is, in a nutshell....

Exactly. It's a strategy that works until it doesnt work. If you then dont have proper risk mgmt/stop losses you will lose everything.

Vic was basically picking up nickels in front of a steamroller.

Unfortunately for him and his clients he got smushed twice.

 

[syswizard]

To lighten things up on this thread, I have to tell this story of my experience SELLING PREMIUM.

I was a programmer at the time working as a contractor for a small corporation. I was making good money at the time and had started an account at Brown & Company, a well-respected retail firm at the time (1998). I was able to connect to my account and place trades from work which was pretty nifty at the time. However, I wasn't doing that well trying to swing trade by buying options. After doing some reading, I discovered that option SELLERS were more often profitable than the buyers. So one day, I decided to give it a try. I was not aware of margin requirements and I placed a trade one Friday shorting 3 NDX puts. The Nasdaq had been going down all week and I thought it was overdue. Well, I get filled that Friday afternoon as the market was swooning. Monday morning comes around and I get a call from Brown about a margin call. They said I needed ANOTHER $20k into my account to cover the short put positions. I was floored ! However, by the time I had returned the call, my position was up $2000....as the market rallied mightily. The Brown rep told me "nice trade" and then hung up...not too intent on the margin req. I was so full of myself, and the next thing I did was say "I'm never going to close this position, I'm gonna take ALL OF THE PREMIUM". It was 2 weeks till expiration.
The market stayed flat after that one day rally and I got a bit worried. Then that Friday, the one before the expiration, the market started to tank. I kept checking my position and my profits disappeared. I was now at a loss and it was 3 pm that Friday. The final hour was ugly: straight down. Now I was down $3k. Surely, I was going to be closed-out by Brown I thought to myself. I covered my position at 3:55 pm and took the loss.
Monday morning came and the opening print for my puts was 60 !! That would have been the price that Brown would have covered me at. It would have been a loss of nearly $18,000....wiping out my account.
True story. Know when to fold em, know when to hold em.

 

[Thunderdog]

Quote from jem:

All I want to see is an end to self promoting bullshit without the facts to back it up.

You can't tell me you are a great trader if you were selling premium and you blew up at least twice.

Selling premium, self promoting and extracting management fees and profits prior to blowing up is a a con game or damn close to it in my opinion.

To support my belief I can point to LTCM, VN and Countrywide, WAMU etc.

To further support it I provide this fact.
Goldman was buying insurance on their short puts from AIG. And to manage their counter party risk they purchased two presidential administrations and congress.

They knew you can't sell premium forever. I would argue that it any fund manager selling options should understand the options risk profile.

Be careful where you tread, jem. You are liable to invoke surf's ire and disdain:

Quote from marketsurfer:

...your socialistic, anti capitalism, anti risk nature is on full display.

surf

 

[whoispaul]

Here we've got two losers talk to each other: one can't be right, the other can't be wrong ...

 

[jasonc]

Quote from hughb:

If I had lost money for my investors, I would sell my real estate and give them proceeds to make up for their losses.

That is a ridiculous statement that had i even invested with him I would never expect. He never did anything fraudulent and the risk to his investors they except and should not have invested with him if they did not want to risk any capital. And to the person who claimed the 50000 to 50 million is only ever brought up in the article he does state in education of a speculator on page 108 " I quickly ran my 40,00 into 22 million"