Archives of “victor niederhoffer” tag

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10 Must Reads Books

  
  Education
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#10. Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners by Larry Harris

“Trading and Exchanges demystifies the complex world of trading. It is a must for anyone interested in investing in the public markets” –Maria Bartiromo, CNBC News Anchor

“My goodness, if only I had known this, or hadn’t let it happen to me!” or, “never again, the b##tards!” – Victor Niederhoffer

‎#9. The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The classical Chinese War Manual written 2500 years ago that is a must read at every Military Academy in the world still! Why do we need to understand war? Begin to think in the context of the markets, should I take this trade, should I not the type of conflict present in everyday trading life. ‎

#8. Statistics Without Tears: A Primer for Non-Mathematicians by Derek Rowntree

This primer without any of the mathematical formula and equations uses words and diagrams to help readers understand what statistics is and how think statistically. ‎

#7. Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street by Henry Clews (more…)

Technical Analysis -A Small Note

  
  Education
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Most traders in the markets use charts and technical analysis to establish and exit their positions. Academicians and skeptics point to the random nature of many technical patterns. Here’s a typical chart generated by random numbers. If you don’t tell a trader it’s randomly generated, they’ll come up with all sorts of predictions and patterns that the chart generates. And if you dare to suggest that what they’re doing is mumbo jumbo, they take great offense and beat you on the head with examples of great traders who follow charts, and examples of others who consistently make a fortune by using charts.

There’s a trader from Harvard who uses charts and has made 20 billion who says “using a chart is like a Dr. taking your temperature before a diagnosis.” Another one says that if charts are so useless how come everyone including you looks at it before making a trade. One of the most respected and successful traders, a friend, puts the debate in focus: “There are lots of great tools in technical analysis (some of them in his book like trader’s positions, and breakouts, open interest and spreads). They’re very useful as part of a bigger trading process. There are good saws and hammers but it takes a good carpenter to make them work.”

There’s a guy in Japan who calls himself the Japanese Victor Niederhoffer who has turned $ 10,000 into 5 million by using charts. I hope to meet him in Japan when I visit there for a talk arranged by one who believes in charts, an estimable fellow who combines charts with anthropology, life extension and sports, and perhaps I will become the American Matsohita-Masamichi.

Options values are determined by using random numbers with the same standard deviation and distribution of prices as would be generated with the random number generators I just mentioned. Every trader on the floor uses such generators to predict the price that an option should trade at, and they do very well with this model– until something like the 1987 crash occurs and they go broke.

A famous former academic big options trader and head of the exchange said that almost all the scientific options traders he knew found that when you apply the random walk model to options, it turns out that puts are priced much too highly. He said that he’s watched every last one of them go broke. The problem here is that extreme events tend to occur much more frequently than the random walk model would predict.

15 Crucial Points From -Trading Psychology 2.0

  
  Education
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11. Discipline, while necessary for success, is never sufficient. Discipline does not substitute for skill, talent, and insight. Strict, disciplined adherence to mediocre plans can only lock in mediocre results. If it were otherwise, there would be no losing automated trading systems.

2. It is not enough to find an “edge” in financial markets; as any tech entrepreneur can attest, competitive advantages are perishable commodities. Those who sustain success continually renew themselves, uncovering fresh sources of competitive advantage. That requires processes for assessing and challenging our most basic assumptions and practices. It takes a good trader to create success, a great one to recreate it. Nothing is quite as difficult— and rewarding— as letting go of what once worked, returning to the humble status of student, and arising phoenix-like from performance ashes.

3. This productivity is readily apparent on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis: The greats simply get more done than their colleagues. They organize their time and prioritize their activities so that they are both efficient (get a lot done per unit of time) and effective (get the right things done). How much time do we typically waste as traders, staring unthinkingly at screens, chatting with people who offer little insight, and reading low-priority/ information-poor emails and reports? The successful traders invariably are workhorses, not showhorses: They get their hands dirty rooting through data and make active use of well-cultivated information networks.

4. Successful traders I’ve known work as hard on themselves as on markets. They develop routines for keeping themselves in ideal states for making trading decisions, often by optimizing their lives outside of markets.

5. This, for me as a psychologist, has been one of the greatest surprises working with professional money managers: The majority of traders fail, not because they lack needed psychological resources but because they cannot adapt to what Victor Niederhoffer refers to as “ever-changing cycles.” Their frustration is a result of their rigid trading, not the primary cause. No psychological exercises, in and of themselves, will turn business around for the big-box retailer that fails to adapt to online shopping or the gaming company that ignores virtual reality. The discipline of sticking to one’s knitting is destined for failure if it is not accompanied by equally rigorous processes that ensure adaptive change. (more…)

Trading Without Ego

  
  Education
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Make no mistake about it. A trader’s self concept has to be separate from the trading. Who you are as a person began before you ever thought of trading and who you will be as a person will extend beyond your trading. When personal self-worth entwines with trading, it not only damages self esteem, it sabotages the trading.

You hear about it. You read about it. Don’t be misled. Traders tell stories. They write stories. They tell how great they are. Big trades. Big numbers. Big egos. Hubris. And sooner or later, big downfalls. It goes with the territory.

Consider the outsized egos of certain traders who brought themselves and those associated with them to ruin. Nicholas Leeson brought down the Barings Bank. Victor Niederhoffer ran his fund into deficit. John Merriweather threatened the health of our banking system by betting more than fifty times his capital that his strategies were certain to work, that he could forecast with impunity the direction of various bond markets. There’s a pattern here of seeming or real success for a while and then collapse for themselves and for those caught up in blindly following them. (more…)

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