Skip to main content

Altucher: Things I learned from Vic Niederhoffer

When James Altucher mentioned (on Twitter) that he was preparing an article about lessons learned while trading for Victor Niederhoffer, I knew that was one essay I'd be looking forward to.

Here's James on, "Ten Things I Learned While Trading for Victor Niederhoffer":

"I traded for Victor Niederhoffer for about a year starting in 2003. I was up slightly more than 100% for him, primarily trading futures using a quantitative approach. During that period I had one down month: June 2003.


Victor was a top trader for George Soros before starting his own fund in the ’90s and then writing the classic investment text “Education of a Speculator.” He then suffered one of several blowups in his career when his fund crashed to zero while on the wrong side of a couple of bets during the Asian currency crisis in 1997 (most notably, he was short S&P puts when the market crashed that year).

Despite that, Victor has consistently traded his own portfolio quite successfully and is one of the best traders I’ve seen in action. He still posts his daily comments on trading and the markets at his site dailyspeculations.com.

Here are 10 things I learned during my time trading for Victor:
..."

Read on as Altucher talks about the importance of testing your ideas, optimism, fearlessness, and protecting your downside (there's a lot more here too). Enjoy the essay and the lessons.

Popular posts from this blog

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...

Round trip stocks: momentum booms and busts

" No tree grows to Heaven ." - Old proverb adopted by Wall Street. What happens to hot momentum stocks when their rocket fuel runs out? How long can they continue to fly before they come crashing back down to earth? Why is the stock that you paid $100 a share for now trading at $39? These are questions that many novice traders and investors may be struggling with in the wake of the most recent market correction. Momentum stocks have been hit hard as the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 indices have moved lower in recent weeks. Caught unaware by the recent slide, some traders may be wondering when their beaten-down stocks will snap back and allow them to exit with smaller losses (or even reach the mythical "break even" point).  While growth stocks still firmly within their uptrends may form constructive technical bases and move higher after this correction, others may experience sharper pullbacks or break down into full "stage 4" declines (see chart below...

Finance Trends 2019 Mid-Year Markets Review

Email subscribers of the Finance Trends Newsletter receive the first look at new articles and market updates, such as the following piece, sent out to our email list on Sunday (6/14).   Hello and welcome, everyone! If you received our last email notice over the July 4th holiday, you'll know that this weekend's newsletter will serve as a mid-year market update and a follow-up to issue #29, " How to Reinvest in a Rising Market ".   Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's start the show...  Finance Trends Newsletter: Our Mid-Year Market Review When we last spoke, back in February, the U.S. stock market was rallying off its December-January lows. As the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reclaimed their 200 day moving averages in February and March, it became increasingly apparent that a lot of retail investors (and perhaps some institutional investors) were left under-invested while watching this recovery move from the sidelines.  The U.S. stock ...