Market Wizard, Vic Sperandeo interview: gold, inflation, and trading the QE wave

Trader, author, and Market Wizard, Victor Sperandeo joins us for an exclusive interview in our first Finance Trends podcast. To say we caught a lucky break with our first guest is a bit of an understatement. 

Victor is a highly regarded veteran trader who has been involved with the markets since his first job as a Wall Street quote boy back in 1966. When he began his independent trading career in 1971, his primary goal was to make money consistently, month after month, year after year. 

After 40+ years of consistent profitability, I'd say he's met that goal. 

Over the course of his career, Vic has traded independently, managed hedge funds and CTAs (commodity trading advisors), and ran portfolios for George Soros and Leon Cooperman. He has also written three books on trading, including, Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master, a personal favorite which interlaced Vic's trading insights with sections on Austrian economics and personal psychology!

In this rare, hour-long interview you'll hear "Trader Vic" discuss his recent editorial on Paul Krugman (a "political hack") and our debt problems, the Fed's quantitative easing program and prospects for future inflation, his outlook on gold prices, Austrian economics and economic and personal freedom (or lack thereof), as well as his insights on successful trading and the importance of trading psychology. 

Plus, you'll hear about the upcoming Trader Master Class with Vic in New York City (more info below).



Some highlights and quotes from our interview with Vic Sperandeo: 

On gold prices: "What gold doesn't like is higher growth...gold didn't do well from 1982 to 1999. Gold likes chaos and it likes inflation. With every central bank in the world inflating, long-term, gold is a buy. Short-term, there is someone putting pressure on the gold market. I believe it's the Fed or banks working through the Fed to keep gold prices down and to make money-printing policies more acceptable."

The effects of Quantitative Easing: "QEs have not worked to the degree that most people have assumed they would because nobody is spending the money. Money velocity (the turnover of money in the system) hasn't sped up to a degree that would create runaway inflation... and banks aren't making loans of any consequence. What it's doing [with the mix of current, offsetting fiscal policies] is slowing the economy and distorting the markets as people are putting their money in stocks, thinking that this is good for corporate profits."

Vic's insights on trading and the need for emotional discipline: "Sometimes the smartest people and those who have biases, like yours truly, can cost themselves money. You try to eliminate your biases. In my case, I'm biased against believing in the Fed and in Ben Bernanke knowing what he is doing. But that doesn't subtract from trading - if you're trading you really don't care what Bernanke knows or doesn't know [set aside your biases]." 

Investing vs. trading in 2013: "We're not in a real good investment environment here. We're in a very good trading environment and a great liquidity environment. If you're a trader, you should be doing well following the uptrend in stocks because of QE. If you're taking bigger positions and you're betting on longer-term growth, there's where the differences lie and you have to be very careful. Trends and the technicals trump the fundamentals here [in a Fed-driven market]." 

How crucial is psychology in trading and in life?: "The fact is you can train a number of people to do the same thing and you get different results. Why is that? The difference is emotions - it's psychology. The problem is not in the knowledge, it's in the execution. Very few people can discipline themselves to execute the knowledge. It takes emotional discipline." 

Victor Sperandeo will be sharing his global macro outlook and his trading techniques with a select group of participants in an upcoming (March 22nd) Trader Master Class in New York City. You can learn more and sign up (class size is tightly limited) at the link above. 

I hope you enjoyed listening to this interview half as much as I enjoyed doing it. If you'd like to help us spread this discussion to more listeners, please share and retweet this post with your friends and readers by choosing from the ShareThis buttons below (email is included). Thank you for reading and come back often

If you're enjoying these posts and would like to see more, please subscribe to our free RSS updates and follow Finance Trends in real-time on Twitter and StockTwits. 

Related posts: 

1. Inner Voice of Trading: a lesson on ego and risk.

2. Nassim Taleb and Stan Druckenmiller on coming crisis (Bloomberg interviews). 

3. Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Steve Clark (full post series).

Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Steve Clark

Photo via marshfieldrodandgunclub.com

"Remarkable performance consistency". 

These are the words Jack Schwager uses at the outset to describe the track record of Steve Clark's Omni Global Fund. 

In his opening notes on Clark's event-driven hedge fund, Schwager points out that Omni Global has been profitable every year since its inception in 2001. This, of course, includes the panic year of 2008, during which Clark handily outperformed the Hedge Fund Research index of funds sharing this strategy. 

The combination of strong gains and moderate equity drawdowns and losing periods gave Omni Global an "extremely high Gain to Pain ratio", a return/risk measure favored by Hedge Fund Market Wizards author, Jack Schwager. In other words, he is very, very good. 

On to the interview lessons... 

1. Steve Clark was "brutally honest" in his interview with Schwager. In the opening, Clark describes his background; raised in a council house on the outskirts of London, no father in sight, no university degree, and no initial trading experience. Clark was installing stereo systems when a friend told him about trading jobs in the City.  Sometimes interest and motivation are more important than "pedigree".

2. He worked a series of back-office jobs and assistant roles before getting a shot at running a market-making book. He got his first chance to trade the book while filling in for a trader on holiday...during the week of the October 1987 crash. Trial by fire situation.

3. Steve learned a valuable lesson making prices on October 19, 1987: the price is where anyone is prepared to deal, and it can be anything. Steve found he had to quote prices so low until sell orders dried up. He still lost several million pounds on his book that day.

4. Eventually he became the most profitable trader in his group. Steve credits this shift to his ability to cut positions that were down or "wrong". He also traded around news to orientate himself on "the right side of the market". Plus, he was inexperienced and didn't have the fear that cripples people who've been in the business for a long time.

5. Traded on order flow info and screened for stocks making moves on big volume. He also used charts to see what happened when stocks reached certain levels in prior periods. Clark cautions that he is not a big believer in predictive chart analysis.

6. Clark left his market-making job at top-rated Warburg for a better salary offer from Lehman Brothers. He soon found that he couldn't make money at his new firm, having left behind an environment that was rich in order flow information. It was a shock to his ego and caused him to doubt his ability as a trader. It happens to the best of us.

7. Eventually he bounced back and over time developed contacts with trusted brokers. He used their order flow info to gauge near-term market sentiment on news events. If he was not aligned with momentum he would cut his position. Steve believes in buying on the way up.

8. Steve gives traders one key piece of advice: do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Dissect your P + L and see what works for you (types of trades, timing, etc.) and what doesn't.

9. Price is irrelevant, it's size that kills you. If you are too big in an illiquid position, there is no way out.

10. Clark discusses a period of professional ups and downs that begins after the initial seed money for his first hedge fund fell through. After seeding a small fund on a shoestring using his own money, he wound up closing shop and went back to work for others. Thus began a hard road which led to some contentious litigation and Clark's disillusionment with The City. 

11. Set up his own fund in 2001 after a successful career move to First New York Securities. Despite his trading success, Clark says he is still waiting to find out "what I want to do when I grow up". A revealing section of the interview follows, in which Clark feels he has nothing to show for his trading career except money. "What have I accomplished?",  he asks.

It may be worthwhile to reflect on this issue. What are we in this for? Your values and your assessments of the pros and cons of a trading career may vary. 

12. Back to trading. It's the size of your position rather than the price at which you put it on that determines your ability to keep the position. Trade within your emotional capacity. Don't take on a bigger position than you can handle. If you wake up thinking about a position, it's too big.

13. When everything lines up, you need to swing for the fences. However, if the position starts acting in a way you don't understand, you need to cut it because that is a sign you don't know what is going on. 

14. Your job as a trader is to make the line [your equity curve] go from bottom left to top right. That's it. Don't get hung up on other supposed "mandates". Protect your capital and the direction of that equity line.

. . . .

That's it for this latest edition in our interview series. We'll have some new "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" posts for you over the next few weeks. In the meantime, do pick up a copy of Hedge Fund Market Wizards to get the full color and detail of all these great trader interviews.

You can revisit the earlier posts in our Hedge Fund Wizards series (it's like a Cliff's Notes of investing) here:

a) Jack Schwager's insights from Hedge Fund Market Wizards. 

b) Lessons from HF Market Wizards: Colm O'Shea.

c) Lessons from HF Market Wizards: Ray Dalio.

d) Lessons from HF Market Wizards: Scott Ramsey.  

We have some more great stuff in the works, so stay tuned to the Finance Trends blog feed and our Twitter updates for the latest on upcoming posts. Thanks for reading!

Links: Popular posts and new trading insights

Some Presidents' Day reading and insights to guide us into the coming week.

Recently popular posts on Finance Trends:

1. Trading psychologists: Overcoming your fear of pulling the trigger. 

2. Global macro trading: Lessons from Market Wizard, Colm O'Shea.

3. Lessons from Market Wizard, Ray Dalio. - "Markets teach you that you have to be an independent thinker."

4. Lauren Templeton shares investing lessons from Sir John Templeton. Real wisdom on markets, behavioral finance, and life here.

5. Jim Rogers on Street Smarts and outsized investing returns. Rogers says the 4,200 percent returns he and Soros achieved at Quantum Fund are replicable, if you are passionate and work hard enough.

Items of interest (markets, trading, and insights) from around the web:

1. Excellent Q+A with trader, Brian Shannon: Better Trading With Multiple Timeframes.

2. Joe Fahmy on The Greatest Trading Book Ever.

3. Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (e-book).

4. On the Invariant Nature of Investor Returns: "We were irrational then and we're irrational now.".

5. Q+A with Chris Kacher and Gil Morales: why they trade like William O'Neil.

Thanks for reading. Check back soon (via RSS and/or Twitter), we'll have a new post in our "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" series to share with you and more.

Photo credit: George Washington via Newport Buzz.

Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Scott Ramsey

Today we continue our series, "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards", with a look at Jack Schwager's interview with Scott Ramsey of Denali Asset Management. 

Ramsey, a futures trader and CTA who works on the island of St. Croix, spoke to Schwager about his first foray into the markets, his evolution as a trader, and the process he stands by to protect and grow his clients' money.

1). Ramsey started trading in college. He was roped into the OTC metals market via a broker's ad in the Wall St. Journal. The broker charged customers a flat fee to buy and sell as much as they wanted in a particular market for six month. At the time, Scott was a novice and didn't know about futures, so he traded metals in this fashion through the inflationary run-up of the late 1970s.

2). Scott had to rethink his trading strategy after he bought silver at $50 an oz., only to watch it collapse to $26 following a long string of limit-down days. He sold as soon as the market resumed trading, but he lost all the money he had made plus some starting capital.

3). "Losing money was what got me hooked", says Scott. He knew that some 90% of futures traders lost money and he was determined to be in the 10% that profited. This motivated him to succeed. He was so engrossed in trading that he left college 9 credits shy of graduating, despite being an excellent engineering student.

4). Scott learned to trade first w/ his own money, then by advising clients as a broker. He leased a seat on the IMM and tried trading from the floor. Being on the floor turned out to be a big disadvantage compared to screen trading. Scott felt there was a lack of meaningful info in the pits and he lost his feel from watching other markets. He soon left the floor.

5). Ramsey continued to broker and screen trade, watching every market and updating chart books by hand. He made money in his own account almost every year, but not a lot. Why? Ramsey says it was because he focused only on TA, not fundamentals. Also, because he regularly pulled money out of his account. He stayed a 1-2 lot trader instead of pushing it and increasing his size.

6). "The evolution of a trader is when you start letting your money work for you and increasing your size."
 
7). Scott is one of those traders who has used his time as a broker to his learning advantage. By observing retail clients, he learned what not to do - everything from holding losers and taking small profits to emotional decision making and chasing market activity.

8). In order to make the big money, Scott realized he had to embrace fundamentals. The transition began when he started thinking about prevailing sentiment in the bond market and why prices were where they were. He thought about how people were positioned and the psychology behind prices. He then initiated a trade that was positioned against the prevailing sentiment, which turned out to be a very profitable move. "I began to look at the market from the perspective of other traders."

9). Discussing market action during the Euro crisis, Ramsey notes, "The market's repeated resilience in the face of negative news tells me it wants to go higher. Chaos creates opportunity. We learn so much about the markets when we have crisis events."

10). Rigorous risk control not only keeps losses small, it impacts profit potential. You must be in a position to seize opportunity. The only way to do that is w/ a clear mind. Don't expend mental energy by managing poor trades. Cut those that are not working.

11). When asked what trading advice he offers to friends, Ramsey tells them that it's not about being right - it's about making money. Taking losses is part of the process, so don't dwell on losing trades. Think about your next trade. Trading is a business. Treat it like one, keep records of your trades and journal your experience.

Once again, I highly recommend reading Hedge Fund Market Wizards to get the full detail and feeling of these interviews. Hope you enjoyed this latest post and we'll see you back here, with more to come, soon. 

Happy New Year to all our readers and friends across the globe!  

If you're enjoying these posts and would like to see more, please subscribe to our free RSS updates and follow Finance Trends in real-time on Twitter and StockTwits. You can also check out our related posts below for more market wisdom and trading insights. 

Related posts: 

1. First 3 posts from "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" series.

2. Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Ray Dalio.

Photo credit: Trend Capture Futures.

Heads up: new "Market Wizards" posts coming soon...

Hi gang, just wanted to let you know that we'll have a new "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" post up soon. In the meantime, you may want to check out the most recent posts from this series. 

Dive in with this introductory post: key interviews and a trading webinar with Hedge Fund Market Wizards author, Jack Schwager. The videos found in this post contain some excellent insights and quotes from the traders and hedge fund managers interviewed in Schwager's latest Wizards book.

Ready to learn from some of the most astute traders around? Here you'll find some choice trading and investing lessons from global macro trader, Colm O'Shea and noted hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio. 

You'll find the first 3 posts in our "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" series below.

1. Jack Schwager shares insights from Hedge Fund Market Wizards.

2. Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Colm O'Shea. 

3. Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Ray Dalio.

Now if you'd like to keep up with our real-time updates and be alerted to our upcoming posts, please subscribe to the Finance Trends RSS feed or follow Finance Trends on Twitter (totally free). 

We'll see you next week with the latest in our "Market Wizards" series. Until then, thanks for reading and have a safe and happy holiday season!

Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Ray Dalio

In our second installment of "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards", we'll offer up some trading and macroeconomic insights pulled from Jack Schwager's interview with Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates. 

You've probably heard of Ray Dalio if you have even a cursory knowledge of the hedge fund industry (or the Forbes billionaires list), so let's get right to it. These notes will fill in the rest of the story. 

1). Dalio is the founder and former CEO (now "mentor") of Bridgewater Associates, a fund that has returned more money ($50 billion) for investors than any hedge fund in history.  

2). Bridgewater still manages to achieve excellent returns on a huge base of capital and has done so over a long period of time. It is among the few hedge funds with a 20-year track record. 

3). Dalio believes that mistakes are a good thing, as they provide an opportunity for learning. If he could figure out what he (or someone else) was doing wrong, he could use that as a lesson and learn to be more effective.

4). His life's philosophy and management concepts are set down in a 111 page document called, Principles, which drives the firm's culture and daily operations. Identifying and learning from mistakes is a key theme. It also advocates "radical transparency" within the firm; meetings are taped and employees are encouraged to criticize each other openly.

5). "The type of thinking that is necessary to succeed in the markets is entirely different from the type of thinking required to succeed in school". Ray notes that school education emphasizes instructions, rote learning, and regurgitation. It also teaches students that "mistakes are bad", instead of teaching the importance of learning from mistakes. 

6). If you are involved in the markets, you must learn to deal with what you don't know. Anyone involved in markets knows you can never be absolutely confident. You can't approach trading by saying, "I know I'm right on this one." Dalio likes to put his ideas in front of other people so they can shoot them down and tell him where he may be wrong. 

7). "The markets teach you that you have to be an independent thinker. And any time you are an independent thinker, there is a reasonable chance you are going to be wrong."

8). Ray learned in his early working years that currency depreciation and money printing are good for stocks. He was surprised to see US stocks rise after Nixon closed the gold exchange window in 1971 (effectively ending the gold standard). The lesson was reinforced when the Fed eased massively in 1982 during the Latin American debt crisis. Stocks rallied, and of course, this marked the beginning of an 18-year bull market.

9). From these earlier experiences, Dalio learned not to trust what policy makers say. He has learned these lessons repeatedly over the years (much like our previous "Market Wizard", Colm O'Shea).  

10). Dalio vividly recalls a time when he was nearly ruined trading pork bellies in the early 1970s. He was long at a time when bellies were trading limit down every day. He didn't know when the losses would end, and every morning he'd hear the price board click down 200 points (the daily limit) and stay there. The experience taught him the importance of risk management - "I never wanted to experience that pain again".

11). "In trading you have to be defensive and aggressive at the same time. If you are not aggressive, you're not going to make money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep money.". 

12). Bridgewater views diversification and asset correlation differently than most. As Dalio puts it, "People think that a thing called correlation exists. That's wrong.". Instead, he describes a world in which assets behave a certain way in response to environmental determinants. Correlations between say, stocks and bonds, are not static, but are changing in response to "drivers" (catalysts) that can cause assets to move together or inversely.

13). By studying how asset prices move in response to certain drivers, Bridgewater looks to build portfolios of truly uncorrelated assets. By combining assets that have very slight correlations, they are able to diversify among 15 assets (instead of 100 or 1000 more closely linked assets). This helps them cut volatility and greatly improve their return/risk ratio. 

14). We are currently in the midst of a "broad global deleveraging" that is negative for growth. Since the United States can print its own money, it will do so to alleviate the pressures of deflation and depression. The effectiveness of quantitative easing will be limited, since owners of bonds purchased by the Fed will use the money to buy similar assets. Dalio elaborates on our future economic course and possible policy approaches to these problems throughout the interview.

There's a lot more in Schwager's chapter with Ray Dalio. These notes just scratch the surface on Bridgewater's process and their quest for the Holy Grail of investing. 

There is also an addendum to the chapter containing Dalio's big picture view of long-term economic cycles and a historical "stage analysis" of the economic rise and fall of nations.

Be sure to check out this latest Market Wizards book (a very worthwhile read) and look for our upcoming posts for more "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards". In the meantime, you'll find more lessons and interviews in our related posts below. 

If you're enjoying these posts and would like to see more, please subscribe to our free RSS updates and follow Finance Trends in real-time on Twitter and StockTwits. You can also check out our related posts below for more market wisdom and trading insights.  

Related posts:

1. Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Colm O'Shea.

2. Jack Schwager interviews on Hedge Fund Market Wizards.

3. Ray Dalio in Barron's: "It's a D-Process". 

4. Ray Dalio's 'Principles'.

*Photo credit: Ray Dalio Blog.

Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Colm O'Shea

In our first installment of "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards", we examine the lessons offered in Jack Schwager's interview with noted global macro trader and hedge fund manager, Colm O'Shea of COMAC Capital. 

Last week we brought you a brief overview of Hedge Fund Market Wizards, including several interviews with author Jack Schwager on the trading insights found within this new Market Wizards volume. 

We'll expand on those ideas throughout this series by zeroing in on our favorite interviews and highlighting some key lessons and quotes. Of course, our notes are just a sample of what readers will find in these interview chapters - we don't want to give away the store!  

Today, we'll look closely at some key insights offered in the book's opening chapter. Here are our notes on Schwager's interview with Colm O'Shea. 

1). Colm O'Shea began his career as a young economic forecaster. He was kept behind closed doors by his firm, who did not want clients to know their research reports and forecasts were written by a 19-year old who had landed the job before starting at university. 

2). Colm realized he did not want to continue publishing consensus-hugging forecasts, and he landed his first job as a trader at Citigroup after graduating from Cambridge. He went on to work for George Soros' Quantum Fund before founding his own firm, COMAC Capital.

3). O'Shea view his trading ideas as hypotheses. Moves counter to the expected direction are proof that his trade hypothesis is wrong. O'Shea is quick to liquidate these positions when they reach a pre-defined price (a level at which his trade hypothesis is invalidated). He risks a small percentage of his assets on each trade - position sizing. 

4). Received early lessons in trading and macro thinking by reading Edwin Lefevre's classic, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Colm points out that the character, Mr. Partridge teaches the protagonist (a thinly-veiled Jesse Livermore) to size up general conditions - "it's a bull market, you know!". 

5). Price movements take place in the context of a larger fundamental landscape. O'Shea believes one must pay attention to both the fundamentals and the technicals (price as seen through technical analysis) to make sense of the picture.
 
6). In his first week as a trader, the British pound was kicked out of the ERM (the famous Soros trade), much to his surprise. Recalls Colm, "I had absolutely no comprehension of the power of markets vs. politics. Policy makers [often] don't understand that they are not in control...it's the fundamentals that actually matter."

7). You can't be short just because you think something is fundamentally overpriced. In the example of the Nasdaq bubble, you should have been selling Nasdaq at 4,000 on the way down, not on the way up. Wait until the market turns over, or until you can see a turning point (a la George Soros shorting the pound).

8). Being short credit in 2006-2007 was the same as being short Nasdaq in 1999. Bubble pricing was evident and the problems were obvious. However, being short was a negative carry trade (in which one must pay a certain cost to maintain a speculative position through instruments such as credit default swaps) and credit spreads went lower (the trade went against you) before a turning point was reached. 

9). All markets look liquid in a bubble. It's liquidity afterwards that matters. Can you get out?

10). There does not have to be an identifiable reason for every trade. O'Shea cites the LTCM blowup in '98 as an example. At the start of the '98 crisis, there was no LTCM story in the press, but T-bond futures were limit up every day. "Once you realize something is happening, you can trade accordingly.". Trade hypothesis = something big is happening. I will participate, but do so in a way that I can get out quickly if wrong.

11). Most great trades are incredibly obvious to everyone after the fact. O'Shea points to his bearish turn at the start of the financial crisis in August 2007, when money markets seized up and LIBOR spiked. To this day, equity people wrongly point to March 2008 (Bear Stearns collapse) as the start of the crisis. The great trades don't require predictions, but you must see what other market participants won't.

12). Big price changes occur when people are forced to reevaluate their prejudices. Crisis (such as the inflationary threat from growing U.S. debt) may hit in the future when people notice and start to care. Bond yields will only signal there's a problem when it's too late. Fundamentals underlying the trade/event exist all along.

Hope you enjoyed the first in our series of "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards". Look for our next post, featuring hedge fund titan Ray Dalio, later in the week. 

If you're enjoying these posts and would like to see more, please subscribe to our free RSS updates and follow Finance Trends in real-time on Twitter and StockTwits. You can also check out our related posts below for more market wisdom and trading insights. 

Related posts:

1. Jack Schwager on Hedge Fund Market Wizards (interviews). 

2. Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Ray Dalio.

Jack Schwager on Hedge Fund Market Wizards

If you're a fan of the Market Wizards books by Jack Schwager, then you've probably read (or are looking forward to reading) the latest in the series, Hedge Fund Market Wizards.

The review copy Wiley was kind enough to send me this summer. I've taken my sweet time re-reading it...

We'll be taking an in-depth look at this book and the insights of the "Hedge Fund Wizards" in an upcoming series of posts, but for now I'd like to share some key interviews and webinars with author Jack Schwager. 

These videos will give you a great inside look at Schwager's writing process, as well as offering some key lessons found in this new collection of interviews with leading traders and hedge fund managers. 

First, an Opelesque interview with Schwager in Manhattan: "15 Hedge Fund Market Wizard trading secrets and insights".



This discussion opens by noting that while markets have changed since the first Wizards books were published, the main principles behind the various traders' successes have not. Certain strategies and opportunities may have gone by the wayside, but successful traders have continued to hone in on what works for them as they strive for superior risk adjusted returns.  

Of supreme importance, Schwager finds, is the need to find a trading method that suits your personality. He cautions young traders from trying to emulate their trading heroes, since top traders may have an approach or strengths that differ from those of the would-be apprentice. You need to develop your own approach. 

If you enjoyed this interview and would like to dig further, check out Michael Martin's interview with Jack Schwager, as well as this Schwager Q&A webinar on the behaviors of Hedge Fund Market Wizards. 

One recurring theme that runs through these discussions is the quote, "There is no single true path". The Market Wizards profiled in this book, and throughout the series, have all found success by managing risk and pursuing the methods that suit their personalities and strengths. 

Join us next week, as we examine some key "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" in our upcoming post series of the same name. See you then.         

If you're enjoying these posts and would like to see more, please subscribe to our free RSS updates and follow Finance Trends in real-time on Twitter and StockTwits.  

Zen and the Art of Trading

Came across this "lost" interview excerpt with an unnamed trader from Jack Schwager's New Market Wizards and I'd like to share it with you here. 

As Schwager explains in the intro to his "Zen and the Art of Trading" chapter, this wide-ranging, and rather philosophical, interview with a top trader had to be scrapped on fears it would alter the trader's image with his firm's corporate clients. 

Schwager asked this trader for permission to anonymously publish one interview excerpt, which he found particularly insightful. Here's a sample:  

"...I still don't understand your trading method. How could you make these huge sums of money by just watching the screen?

There was no system to it. It was nothing more than, "I think the market is going up, so I'm going to buy." "It's gone up enough, so I'm going to sell." It was completely impulsive. I didn't sit down and formulate any trading plan. I don't know where the intuition comes from, and there are times when it goes away.

How do you recognize when it goes away? 

When I'm wrong three times in a row, I call time out. Then I paper trade for a while.

For how long do you paper trade? 

Until I think I'm in sync with the market again. Every market has a rhythm, and our job as traders is to get in sync with that rhythm. I'm not really trading when I'm doing those trades. There's trading being done, but I'm not doing it.

What do you mean you're not doing it? 

There's buying and selling going on, but it's just going through me. It's like my personality and ego are not there. I don't even get a sense of satisfaction on these trades. It's absolutely that objective. Did you ever read Zen and the Art of Archery?..."

Let's note that the unnamed trader's view of zen in trading was partially informed by his reading of Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery. This leads me to the following thoughts & questions.

Some reviewers on Amazon have noted that Herrigel's understanding of zen and his tutelage in archery were rather muddled (for a variety of reasons). They went on to recommend reading Yamada Shoji's critique, "The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery", along with Kyudo: The Essence and Practice of Japanese Archery for greater understanding of these topics. 

Kyudo: The Essence and Practice of Japanese Archery

If Herrigel's pursuit of zen was fraught with misunderstanding, does this mean that some of the lessons drawn from his book are false? 

Was our mystery trader still able to connect with a Westerner's explanation of these topics, thereby fueling his own understanding? 

Can one really achieve a zen state of trading or being, and if so, did the unnamed trader somehow begin to approach this state, as described by his experience in the interview?

As a total (Western-born) outsider, I'll leave these questions open for you to ponder. 

Still, as this interview chapter is now 20 years old, I'd be interested to know more about the unnamed trader and the lessons he has learned in the intervening years. If nothing else, this brief and unique chapter of Schwager's book has certainly proven to be a catalyst for further reflection on the ideas of a "flow state" and trading/being. 

If you're enjoying these posts and would like to see more, please subscribe to our free RSS updates and follow Finance Trends in real-time on Twitter and StockTwits. You can also check out our related posts below for more market wisdom and trading insights.

Related articles and posts: 

1. What makes a great trader? Managing risk.

2. "Know Thyself" - Richard Russell on identity. 

3. Inner Voice of Trading: Lesson on ego and risk.

Bruce Kovner retires: a Market Wizard's career

Bruce Kovner is stepping down as chairman and CEO of Caxton Associates, the hedge fund he founded in 1983. 

Bloomberg has the details on the transition that will see CIO Andrew Law take over at Caxton: 

"...“After 34 years in the trading business and more than 28 years leading Caxton, the time has come to hand the leadership of the company to a new generation,” Kovner, 66, wrote in the letter. “I do so knowing that I will miss the adrenalin rush of confronting markets every day but also confident that new leadership will carry on the traditions, style and substance of Caxton’s successful history.”...

...Kovner is attempting a rare handover of power in the $2 trillion hedge-fund industry, where some of the most successful managers, including Stanley Druckenmiller and George Soros, chose to transform their firms into family offices rather than put another trader in charge. A family office usually oversees money for a wealthy individual and their relatives." 

And a note on Kovner's successor Law, who offers up some interesting comments on lessons learned from Bruce Kovner and similarities in their trading styles:

"...Law’s trading style has always been similar to Kovner’s, he said in an interview in his office on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Yet the older man drove home some important lessons.

“I’ve learned to listen to the markets more,” said Law, meaning that he pays close attention to how markets move relative to one another, and how they react to events. He depends on these observations, rather than what he calls “abstract fundamental preconceptions,” to forecast future price movements.

Law also embraces Kovner’s practice of cutting risk when he doesn’t understand what’s going on in markets, something that Law did in May and June of this year. “Bruce has done this many times in his career,” he said."

Kovner is a true trading legend whose trading career really took off once he joined Commodities Corporation in late 1976. On his performance as a hedge fund manager, Financial Times sums up his 28 years thusly: "An investment of $1,000 in Caxton made when the firm began trading in 1983 would today be worth $168,000.".  

Kovner sat down for a rare interview with Jack Schwager in 1989. The resulting chapter on "Bruce Kovner - The World Trader" can be found on page 31 of this Market Wizards ebook. Check it out.

Schwager, Jack D. - Market Wizards 1989

Related articles and posts: 

1.  Bruce Kovner interview with AR magazine - Absolute Return.

Stockbee interview with Mark Minervini

Pradeep Bonde at Stockbee has posted an interview with "Market Wizard", Mark Minervini.

For those who don't already know, Mark is something of a present-day all-star stock trader and, more recently, a stock trading educator. In 2000, Jack Schwager profiled Mark in his book, Stock Market Wizards, thanks to his largely self-taught skill and the trading record he had amassed up to that point.

Here's an excerpt from Stockbee's interview with Mark:

[SB]: "You often say the individual investor/trader has a great advantage over the Professional manager. What gives the individual investor the edge?

[Mark Minervini]: The biggest advantage that the individual investor has is control. With today’s technology, most traders can have the same tools as a pro. However, the individual trader has a tremendous advantage over professionals like mutual fund managers, mainly because they have greater liquidity and speed. 

This enables the individual to be more concentrated in a smaller list of well-selected names at lower risk because the individual can utilize stop-loss protection with little or no slippage. The individual, with a faster response time, can be more patient and strike at only the most opportune moments, which is the best advantage of all.. " 

After reading Stockbee's interview, be sure to check out Joe Fahmy's interview with Minervini for additional insights into Minervini's trading philosophy and what Fahmy learned from working with him. Excellent stuff.

Joe Fahmy interviews Market Wizard, Mark Minervini

Wanted to share this excellent video chat on trading and the stock market with you. Joe Fahmy interviews his trading mentor, Mark Minervini of Stock Market Wizards fame.

Mark and Joe both maintain a presence on Twitter and StockTwits, so it's been rather interesting to get a closer look at some of their thoughts on markets and trading through their real-time updates.

In this interview, Joe talks with Mark Minervini about his trading philosophy and the importance of blocking out meaningless distractions when focusing on one's trading strategy. This is a great discussion, and it serves as a very good learning opportunity for stock traders.

Check it out, and when you're done, take advantage of some of the other archived posts and trading videos on Joe Fahmy's excellent site.

Dana Galante on the value of auditing firms

Currently rereading Jack Schwager's Stock Market Wizards and I came across a very illuminating excerpt from an interview with short-seller, Dana Galante.

Had you read Galante's interview back in 2000, especially her comments on the value of auditing firms and the discretion banks and fund managers had in valuing illiquid investments, you might not have been surprised by subsequent events in our capital markets (read: Enron, Arthur Andersen, The Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, and so on).

Here's an excerpt from Schwager's chat with Galante in which she explains how a former boss was hiding trading losses from investors by marking up the value of illiquid private company investments in the fund's portfolio:

"JS: It almost sounds as if he was gambling with the portfolio.

DG: It sure appeared to be gambling. Looking back, it seemed that he tried to hide these losses by marking up the prices on privately held stock in his portfolio. He had complete discretion on pricing these positions.

How was he able to value these positions wherever he wanted to?

Because they were privately held companies; there was no publicly traded stock.

Is it legal to price privately held stocks with such broad discretion?

Yes. In respect to private companies, the general partner is given that discretion in the hedge fund disclosure document. The auditors also bought off on these numbers every year. He would tell them what he thought these companies were worth and why, and they would accept his valuations. They were these twenty-two-year-old auditors just out of college, and he was the hedge fund manager making $20 million a year; they weren't about to question him.

Another hedge fund manager I interviewed who also does a lot of short selling said that the value of audits on a scale of 0 to 100 was zero. Do you agree?

Yes.

Even if it's a leading accounting firm?

Oh yeah."

Now this type of exchange may not come as a surprise to readers in 2011, but I can assure you that plenty of people were shocked and caught unaware by these realities back in 2001-2003 and once again during the recent financial crisis.

So I guess the moral of the story is, do your own thinking and don't rely on the word of prestigious auditing firms and conflicted ratings agencies. Always do your own homework and try to understand how "business as usual" at the supposed safeguard firms can lead to disastrous results for those caught unaware.

Trader Vic and Market Wizards on Scribd

I've recently updated the Finance Trends "Classic Trading Books" collection on Scribd to include two personal favorites from Victor "Trader Vic" Sperandeo and Jack Schwager.

You'll now find Sperandeo's, Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master, along with the first volume of Schwager's classic interview series, Market Wizards in the collection.




You can find the scanned e-books and pdf downloadable versions by clicking on the titles in the Trading Books collection widget (RSS readers may need to visit our site to see the Scribd widget) or by visiting the collection shelf at the text link above.

You'll also find a widget embed code included, so feel free to grab it and paste it onto your site or your Facebook page. The widget will be updated automatically to show all newly added titles in the Trading Books collection.

For those of you who'd like a hard copy or Kindle version of these classic texts, visit Amazon (see title links above) to order Sperandeo and Schwager's books. Enjoy!

Interview with Jack Schwager at CIO

Aiki14 points us to this excellent interview with Jack Schwager at Capital Ideas Online.

If you're a fan of The Market Wizards book series and the trader interviews Schwager has compiled over the years, you'll definitely want to check out the distilled wisdom in this piece. Here's an excerpt from the discussion:

"CIO: Thank you Mr. Schwager for taking out time and talking to us. Over your long career in the markets you have interacted with some of the greatest traders. Could you share with us what you perceive are the qualities of great traders?

Jack Schwager: There are really very many. I will give you a few key ones. First on the list would be discipline. I can't think of anybody I have interviewed or met as a trader who has been very successful but has not been disciplined. I think that's probably an absolute essential.

Secondly, money management and risk control is certainly critical in one form or another. Most of the traders that I have interviewed will be the first to acknowledge that they consider money management actually more important than the methodology.

The other thing that is definitely worth mentioning is that successful traders find an approach that fits their personality. Time and time again, I see that the method that a trader is using very much reflects that person's characteristics or natural tendency.

For example, when I interviewed Paul Tudor Jones, he set a time that was during market hours. At the same time I was interviewing him, phones were ringing, people were coming in with messages, and he was watching multiple monitors around his office and yelling out orders on open phone lines to a number of different floors. It was almost complete bedlam, but he actually thrived in that type of atmosphere. That's the way he traded..."

There are some very fine insights on risk management and trading discipline here, along with some discussion on the efficiency of markets and the role human behavior has in shaping market conditions and individual returns. Certainly a worthwhile read; check it out.

Bloomberg profiles SAC's Steve Cohen

Bloomberg has published a lengthy profile of trader and SAC Capital founder, Steve Cohen. If you're not already familiar with the now-legendary hedge fund manager, you will be by the time you finish reading it.

Here's an excerpt from, "Steve Cohen's Trade Secrets".

"...Though Cohen attends more golf and other outings than he once did, most days the balding, blue-eyed, stocky investment manager does what he knows best: He trades. He has a perch in the middle of the Stamford floor, and his bets account for about 10 percent of profits -- down from more than 50 percent 10 years ago.

He doesn’t like noise, so the phones on the floor don’t ring; they light up. He prefers jeans and sweaters to suits and looks more like a tax accountant on casual Friday than a trading titan running a $12 billion hedge fund firm.

Near the trading floor hang pieces from Cohen’s extensive art collection, which includes works by Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.

Cohen maintains the temperature on the trading floor at 69 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) to make sure no one dozes. If a portfolio manager or analyst can’t answer a question about a stock, Cohen is likely to lash out. “Do you even know how to do this f---ing job?” is a standard barb, current and former employees say.

Portfolio managers make money, or they’re fired. They usually last about four years..."

Aside from this overview, I found the first half of the article to be largely weighted towards scandal (or hints of) and an account of how SAC weathered the rough seas of 2006-2008. I have to say that I was interested in hearing more about Cohen's background and his methods of stock trading, which the latter part of the article tries to address (a difficult task as Cohen would not comment for this piece).

If you want to get a fuller, more personal view (though possibly dated) of Cohen's trading style, check out his interview in Schwager's Stock Market Wizards and check out the related article links below.

Related articles and posts:

1. BusinessWeek profiles Steve Cohen (2003) - BW Online.

2. Steve Cohen interview w/ Jack Schwager (preview) - Google Books.

Poker investing: Jeff Yass of Susquehanna

Here's a cool post from John, "The Masked Financier" on, "Beating the odds with (Texas Hold'em) poker investing - Jeff Yass and Susquehanna".

While I'm not much of a card player, I do appreciate the discussion of probability and rational decision making in trading and investing. We also get a glimpse inside the workings of one of America's more secretive trading firms, Susquehanna International Group.

Here's an excerpt from John's post:

"Jeff Yass (and his trading firm Susquehanna) is a prominent example of Texas Holdem Investing in action. Although Yass has been intensely secret about himself and his firm in recent years he first appeared in the popular investment media through an interview with Jack Schwager for “The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders”.

However, just this week the Philadelphia Magazine has written a detailed background piece on Yass and Susquehanna – Beating the Odds – which demonstrates the extent of the close links between poker and trading / investing. Susquehanna already featured on this site where it was described how the firm had held a poker tournament earlier this year in Dublin to select trainee traders for its European operations.

The Philadelphia Magazine piece goes to greater lengths in explaining some of the inner workings of Susquehanna and the integral role that poker plays in the training and work ethic of the firm’s traders..."

Be sure to also read the Philly mag piece, "Beating the Odds", in full. Interesting profile, to be sure.

Related articles and posts:

1. Dasan on poker and investing - Finance Trends.