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Don’t be a hero. Don’t have an ego

  
  Education
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What does it mean to be a hero in trading?

In poker, a “hero call” is sometimes appropriate. It refers to the call of a very large river bet with medium strength — or even Ace-high — based on a strong read that your opponent whiffed on a draw and is representing a huge hand to steal the pot.

In markets and trading, there is no official definition, but we can more or less surmise being a “hero” looks like the following:

Putting your foot down and saying “markets will do X, I’m sure of it!”

Pointing to the sky like Babe Ruth — “this is where my profits on this trade are going to go!” (more…)

The Secrets of The World’s Greatest Traders

  
  Education
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Traders and investors have made and lost some of the world’s most significant pools of wealth.  It’s no coincidence that many of the wealthiest individuals in the world today (and through history) have been successful investors.  Names like Warren Buffet, George Soros, John Paulson, David Einhorn, Bill Gross and Sir John Templeton have become synonymous with strategies that have created astonishing success, in many case creating a groundswell of books and analysts who study their lives with a toothcomb to understand “what” the magic formula was…

Even outside these heavyweights of the trading world, hundreds of thousands of individuals around the world attest to have ‘the best‘ strategy to generate consistent positive returns (in fact, Google alone reveals over 10.4 million results when searching for best trading strategies). At a macro-level, the long-standing efficient market hypothesiswould make it notionally impossible for any trading strategy to be effective (as it asserts a level of information efficiency in the market).  The past quarter century however, has seen a gradual move away from the efficient hypothesis to greater considerations of information asymmetry and behavioral biases driving inefficiencies (opportunities) in the market.  So faced with this complexity, how do some traders generate such astonishing success?

To learn more, I spoke with Jack Schwager who is perhaps best known for his “Market Wizards” book series in which he has interviewed a cross section of the most successful traders and investors in the world.  In May 2012 Jack released the latest book in this best-selling series, “Hedge Fund Market Wizards” (a behind-the-scenes look at the world of hedge funds, from fifteen traders who’ve consistently beaten the markets).

Jack Schwager is a recognized industry expert in futures and hedge funds and the author of a number of widely acclaimed financial books. He is currently the co-portfolio manager for the ADM Investor Services Diversified Strategies Fund, a portfolio of futures and FX managed accounts. He is also an advisor to Marketopper, an India-based quantitative trading firm, supervising a major project that will adapt their trading technology to trade a global futures portfolio.  Previously, Mr. Schwager was a partner in the Fortune Group, a London-based hedge fund advisory firm, which specialized in creating customized hedge fund portfolios for institutional clients.  His previous experience includes 22 years as Director of Futures research for some of Wall Street’s leading firms and ten years as the co-principal of a CTA.

Q: Is there a strategy or style which is most effective at generating return?

 [Jack Schwager] The diversity of strategies people use is truly remarkable, I saw people using completely different strategies to the degree that if I had set out to invent 15 different strategies for a fictional work…. I couldn’t have made the strategies more different to the ones I saw in real life!  This illustrates a point I have made in all my works insofar as there really is no ‘holy grail‘ or single style that is most effective.  Those people looking for a single unified strategy are not asking the right question.

It’s a matter of finding an approach that works for the individual.  A person has to know whether they are comfortable with fundamental or technical, long term or short term, certain types of markets, wider risk or less risk… You can go through a whole checklist of things and find it’s different for each individual.

Even when looking at differences between asset classes we see that every market can be traded using different strategies be they fundamental, technical, or a mixture.  If we take equity markets we see that traders can use strategies including fundamental, value, extreme long term, and day.   If you want a microcosm that proves diversity, there it is! (more…)

Ray Dalio eclipses George Soros as most successful fund manager

  
  Education
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Bridgewater founder with ‘radically transparent’ approach to investing has the last laugh

Almost 40 years ago, a young Harvard graduate called Ray Dalio was trading futures at a brokerage called Shearson Hayden Stone. His boss was one Sandy Weill, who would go on to become famous as chairman and chief executive of Citigroup.

It was a promising start in finance. But the promise did not last long: Wall Street legend has it that after just a year in the job Dalio was sacked for taking a stripper to a client presentation.

Such a debut could have led to the rookie drifting off into obscurity – or just as easily have been the beginning of prolonged fame. Yet neither happened.

Instead, the son of a jazz musician sloped off and founded his own hedge fund, Bridgewater, from a two-bedroom apartment. It took three decades operating out of Westport, Connecticut before people outside the sector started to talk about Dalio once again.

The credit crisis was the trigger that propelled the money manager’s name back into Wall Street conversation, after providing him with the platform to outshine rivals and reap massive rewards.

This week the 62-year-old’s fortune was put at $10bn (£6.3bn) in Forbes’s latest list of billionaires. Last month he was lauded as the most successful hedge fund manager in history, after new rankings compiled by LCH Investments showed the $13.8bn that his Bridgewater Pure Alpha fund made in 2011 had propelled Dalio past the grandaddy of hedge fund investing, George Soros, in terms of returns to investors. (more…)

The perils of Paulson

  
Analysis, Education
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The crown may be slipping fast from billionaire trader John Paulson’s head.

The hedge fund manager became an overnight sensation in 2007 by betting big and early on the collapse of the U.S. housing market, and then doing much of the same on a surge in gold prices. But he is now emerging as one of this year’s big losers in the $2 trillion hedge fund industry.

His Paulson & Co. hedge fund firm, which managed $38 billion as recently as this past March, is down to about $35 billion as of the first week of August, and it shrinks a little bit more with every big drop in the U.S. stock market.

One of Paulson’s two main funds is now down more than 30 percent this year, the firm has reported to clients, compared to a much smaller 6.1 percent decline for the average hedge fund, according to Hedge Fund Research.

The problem for the 55-year-old manager: His equally daring bet that the U.S. economy and housing market would rebound strongly from the financial crisis — a big wager that looked prescient a year ago — isn’t panning out as planned.

Paulson’s funds have amassed huge, mutual fund-style stakes in shares of financial institutions like Bank of America, Citigroup, Hartford Financial, Popular Inc. and American Capital. But these are ringing up hefty losses.

And with fears of a double-dip recession in the United States mounting, coupled with this month’s 13 percent plunge in the S&P 500, the talk is growing on Wall Street that unless Paulson can quickly turn things around, the hedge fund king could be hit with a wave of year-end investor redemptions.

“There are many investors who have experienced great gains with John Paulson, but a lot of the money has come into his funds after those great gains were achieved, and the relative newcomers are seeing a lot of heavy losses,” said Daryl Jones, director of research at Hedgeye Risk Management, which sells investment research to institutional investors. “I would imagine it would lessen their appetite to stay with someone who is supposed to be a big superstar but is down double digits right now.”

Paulson, through a firm spokesman, declined to comment. But people close to Paulson point out that other than hedge fund guru George Soros, no one has consistently made more money for clients than the man referred to by his friends and associates as “J.P.”

LOYALTY TEST

This year, however, his investors’ loyalty is being put to the test.

Maybe no one single trade has come to symbolize Paulson’s bullishness on the U.S. economy more than Bank of America. By August 9, the troubled lender’s shares were down 43 percent this year, reducing the value of the 124 million shares Paulson owned as of March 31 by $784 million. Paulson is believed to have sold some of his Bank of America shares as the stock has plunged toward the $7 mark, but the firm has refused to comment on its current position. (link.reuters.com/gem23s)

The picture isn’t much prettier for Paulson’s large share holdings in Citigroup, Popular (formerly Banco Popular) and SunTrust Banks. The value of Paulson’s equity stake in those three banks, assuming the funds haven’t sold any shares since March 31, would have declined by more than $800 million over the past four months.

And then there is Sino-Forest, the troubled Chinese forestry company. Paulson absorbed a $500 million loss on the stock in June after allegations of accounting irregularities at the Hong Kong-based company surfaced earlier in the month. (link.reuters.com/hem23s)

The series of missteps is tarnishing the near god-like status the former Bear Stearns trader has earned over the past few years.

Much of the $20 billion in outside investor money Paulson manages has come from pension funds and clients who bought in after he made $15 billion for the firm in 2007 on his well-chronicled subprime mortgage trade. Paulson raised that money by making his hedge fund one of the most widely available to wealthy customers of dozens of large and small brokerage firms. (more…)

Warren Buffett not lured by gold

  
Analysis, Education
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Warren BuffetEverybody is bullish on gold these days. You even have outfits like ‘Cash For Gold’ peddling their trades at your local mall. But historically, gold has never been a great long term investment.

While the love for gold can take this commodity to $3,000, be sure to get off the train before the top. Because once it goes down, it stays down for decades.

NEW YORK (Commodity Online): A gold boom is on and despite the ‘bubble talk’ on gold, every investor worth the name is running after the shining metal. From Jim Rogers to John Paulson, most investors or investing analysts have argued that gold is the best investment bet against rising inflation and declining US dollar value. They all are waiting for a gold bull run that will go past $2000 per ounce in 2010.

But Warren Buffett, the world’s richest investor and billionaire businessman, has not yet fallen for gold. His ideas on gold and why he is not interested obsessed with investing in the shining yellow metal should be an eye opener for all those who are running after gold.

Here are some reasons why gold is not luring Warren Buffett, and why there are better, erudite and lasting investing options than gold.

”Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.” Warren Buffett. (more…)

John Paulson's 8 Secrets

  
  Education
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  1. Don’t follow the crowd.
  2. Have an exit strategy before the bubbles burst
  3. Focus on the debt markets for predicting the future.
  4. Take the time to figure out how fancy new investment products like credit default swaps (CDS) work.
  5. Buy insurance. No one wanted out of the money puts on the housing market.
  6. Remember the past. Some of the big winners in the housing crash were those dismissed as out-of-touch dinosaurs.
  7. Remember that no trade lasts forever so don’t fall in love with your investment. After making his $20 billion. Paulson went long banks at the bottom. (The verdict is still out on this trade).
  8. Timing is everything and luck helps.
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