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Summary
Summary
Acclaim for The Education of a Speculator, a provocative and penetrating look into the mind, the soul, and the strategies of one of the most controversial traders of all time
"A compelling and an entertaining read." -The Wall Street Journal
"Victor Niederhoffer gives us page after page of distilled investment wisdom. Taken together, this is pure nectar to those who aim for consistently superior stock market performance." -Barron's
"The Education of a Speculator offers plenty of insights into the way markets work, but the epiphanies are what a reader might expect from Lao-tzu rather than, say, Graham and Dodd." -Worth magazine
"The Education of a Speculator is the first meaningful book on speculating. Successful speculating is as fine an art as chess, checkers, fishing, poker, tennis, painting, and music. Niederhoffer brings forth the best from each of these fields and shows the investor how their principles can enrich one's life and net worth." -Martin Edelston, President, Boardroom Inc., publishers of Boardroom Classics and Bottom Line/Personal
"With an original mind and an eclectic approach, Victor Niederhoffer takes the reader from Brighton Beach to Wall Street, visiting all stops of interest along the way. What emerges is a book full of insights, useful to the professional and layman alike." -George Soros, Principal Investment Advisor, The Quantum Fund
Author Notes
Victor Niederhoffer is Chairman of Niederhoffer and Niederhoffer, Inc., a futures trading firm with approximately $100 million under management. He has written numerous articles for scholarly and professional publications, including The Financial Analysts Journal. Mr. Niederhoffer lives in Weston, CT.
Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
Spiked with irreverent, often self-deprecating humor, this rambling memoir by the head of Niederhoffer Investments, a top-ranked Wall Street commodities trading firm, is entertaining, outspoken and sometimes maddening. Born in Brooklyn in 1943, the author, who grew up playing stoop ball, applies his street smarts to the art of speculation as he distills lessons from handball, chess, checkers, gambling, poker and also tennis, which he played while attending Harvard. National men's squash champion for 10 years, he retired from the game on principle after he was denied membership in athletic clubs that excluded Jews. Sketching an eclectic history of forecasting techniques from ancient Greece's Delphic oracle to the Federal Reserve, Niederhoffer extrapolates from weather predicting and handicapping horse races to estimating price movements, and draws strained if intriguing parallels among sex, music and speculation. Finally, he turns to ecology for an "ecosystem model" of futures and foreign-exchange markets. Although he lays out no comprehensive system, his book is full of unconventional advice on what and when to buy and sell. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Niederhoffer is a successful commodities trader who has worked for George Soros and who was one of the authors of a widely noted National Review article that held up Hillary Clinton's unusual success in trading cattle futures to unfavorable scrutiny. Niederhoffer has earned his money by following a philosophy of avoiding the herd, yet here he follows a recent trend that has financiers and investment wizards penning autobiographies and memoirs. These books are popular with those hoping to discover some mysterious secret for investment success, and Niederhoffer will attract similar readers, but his book is also fascinating entertainment. He begins with a nostalgic look at his Brighton Beach beginnings and cheerfully rambles to the present, making connections all the way between everyday events and the world of finance. To Niederhoffer, even a game of checkers, discovering sex, or learning to play music can be instructive when it comes to investing. --David Rouse
Library Journal Review
Niederhoffer, a friend of George Soros who was once voted best commodity trading advisor, shares what has made him a savvy, successful speculator. He writes that "Willie Sutton (yes, the bank robber) exemplified the rule that success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration." In this long but fascinating memoir, he discusses how he was influenced by sports in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of his youth (he was born in 1943) and how street games and racquet games (he was National Men's Squash Champion for ten years) helped form his talent for speculation. He then delves into the influence of history, sex, war, ecology, sports, music, and even the Delphic oracle on his speculation effortsall of which require great concentration and attention to detail. However, apparent throughout is the influence of his own family history on his values and actions. Readers who enjoy biographies in general are in for a treat. Investors, especially those who are not familiar with speculation and commodities, are in for an "education," too.Steven J. Mayover, Free Lib. of Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| The Old Trader and the Yen | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 Brighton Beach Training | p. 9 |
| The Losers | |
| The Little People | |
| A Brighton Pedigree | |
| The Boardwalk | |
| The Brighton Cycles | |
| Brokerage House Bellwethers | |
| Lessons from Livermore | |
| Racquet Training | |
| The Finest Gentleman | |
| Control of Temper | |
| Economy of Motion | |
| Some Lessons from Willie Sutton | |
| A Three-Person Partnership | |
| Chapter 2 Panics and Hoodoos | p. 36 |
| Buy after the Panic | |
| The Mighty Fallen | |
| Were You Short? Middlemen | |
| Gimme a Hundred HAT | |
| Once Burned | |
| My First Stock | |
| Small Profits | |
| A Good Chew | |
| Hard Times Are Here | |
| Looking for Lost Luck | |
| Magnums and Jeroboams | |
| Hoodoo | |
| A Harvard Club Hoodoo | |
| The Anti-Hoodoo | |
| Unlucky Days | |
| Everyone Retires to the South | |
| Chapter 3 Delphic Oracles and Science | p. 60 |
| Delphic Ambiguity | |
| Less Gas, More Fog | |
| The Ambiguous Prediction | |
| A Taxonomy | |
| Humble Pie with Whipped Cream | |
| The Long Night | |
| The Light Dawns | |
| Men as Other Men | |
| The Method | |
| Applied Science | |
| Fads and Especially Fallacies | |
| How It's Done Downtown | |
| A Plethora of Auguries | |
| Chapter 4 Losses, Comebacks, Trends, and the Weather | p. 85 |
| How to Lose | |
| Feigning Injury | |
| Advice from an Expert | |
| Practical Losses | |
| The Revenge Factor | |
| Champions vs. Losers | |
| The Pivotal Question | |
| Penumbra of Fluctuation | |
| The Wind Is Your Friend | |
| Forecasting the Weather and Prices | |
| Building Blocks | |
| Midnight Oil | |
| Back to the Drawing Board | |
| Congestion of Prices | |
| Cotton in Ears | |
| Chapter 5 Winning and Self-Reliance | p. 110 |
| That Austere Tradition | |
| Self-Reliance | |
| Hey, All-American | |
| Time Not Wasted | |
| Drop a Perpendicular | |
| Simple Guesses | |
| Accepted at Harvard | |
| The Postman Doesn't Ring | |
| Skating through Harvard | |
| Cultivate Our Gardens | |
| Niederhoffering the Guts | |
| How to "Niederhoffer" a Class | |
| Paying My Way | |
| Blowing in the Wind | |
| Lese Majeste | |
| Harvard Investments | |
| Chapter 6 The Nature of Games | p. 133 |
| Vickie Sawyer | |
| Stoop Ball | |
| Disaster Lies in the Middle | |
| Seize the Moment | |
| Chains | |
| Lady, I Did It | |
| Hades of a Note | |
| Hey, That's Not Fair! | |
| Going for Broke | |
| An Animal Instinct | |
| Game of Life | |
| Speculare | |
| Chapter 7 Essential Board Games | p. 150 |
| Checkers in My Life | |
| A Checkers Mecca | |
| Board Meeting in Progress | |
| Tom Wiswell | |
| Rules of the Game | |
| Before the Game | |
| During the Game | |
| Deception | |
| After the Game | |
| Character of a Winner | |
| Chapter 8 Gambling the Vig | p. 171 |
| I Speculate, You Gamble | |
| Chronology | |
| A Fallen Gambler | |
| Two Hustler-Speculators at Work | |
| Rake versus Ruin--The Vig | |
| The Road to Riches Is Paved with Bodies | |
| Gambling and Speculation | |
| Professional Gamblers | |
| Titans to Be | |
| Running a Play | |
| Pride Goeth | |
| Russ Raises the Stakes | |
| Chapter 9 Horse Racing and Market Cycles | p. 195 |
| Watching the Wheels Turn | |
| Bookie and the Education of a Young Gambler | |
| Elements of Handicapping | |
| The Take | |
| The Consensus | |
| Discipline | |
| Emotion and Self-Doubt | |
| Beware of Switches | |
| The Principle of Ever-Changing Cycles | |
| Old Haunts | |
| Chapter 10 Deception and Charts | p. 217 |
| Lesson 1 The Natural Order | |
| Lesson 2 Even Chess Players Cheat | |
| Lesson 3 By Hook or by Crook | |
| Lesson 4 Primates and Deception (It Runs in the "Family") | |
| Lesson 5 Deceptive Technical Patterns | |
| Ecological Theories of Deception | |
| Circumspection and Distrust: An Economic Theory of Deception | |
| Principles of Deception | |
| One Species, All Deceits--It's War | |
| Second to Ants? | |
| Mimicry | |
| Playing Dead | |
| Concealing Coloration | |
| Disruptive Behavior | |
| Trapping | |
| Changes in Tempo | |
| Markets versus Moths | |
| Chapter 11 Sex | p. 242 |
| Never the Twain | |
| My Grandfather's Bent | |
| Artie's Allusions | |
| My Sex Education | |
| An Attractive Reporter | |
| Keep Your Distance | |
| The Mistress of the Market | |
| History of Sex and Speculation | |
| Transgressions Close to Home | |
| The Science of Sex | |
| Sex in the Speculator's Family | |
| Chapter 12 Returns and Randomness: Academic Style | p. 262 |
| Five Glorious Years | |
| The Lorie Years | |
| A Quantum Variation | |
| An Historic Chance Phone Call | |
| An Unfortunate Short | |
| An Ear Full of Cider | |
| The Random Walk Theory | |
| Competing Hypotheses | |
| Transactions and Regularities | |
| Blue Monday | |
| Reversal of Fortune | |
| An Ounce of Testing | |
| The January Effect | |
| Yearly Seasonals | |
| The Fortunate Illness | |
| Jew or Squash Player? | |
| The Western Frontier | |
| The Goodman Technique | |
| The Chief Rabbi | |
| Time Series Charts | |
| The Subjective Nature of Academic Research | |
| Final Days in the West | |
| Chapter 13 Connections to Monitor | p. 293 |
| Market Chains | |
| Reasons for Interrelations | |
| Bogus Intermarket Relations | |
| Leiningen and the Markets | |
| Humility in Interrelations | |
| The October 1987 Crash | |
| Correlations between Markets | |
| International Connections | |
| Japanese Case Study | |
| A Japanese Field Trip | |
| A Japanese-American Web | |
| International Correlations | |
| Profitability of Intermarket Trading | |
| Connections to Monitor | |
| Chapter 14 Music and Counting | p. 322 |
| Music in the Market | |
| Funeral Music | |
| Pure Music | |
| Predictive Music and Markets | |
| Emotional Moves | |
| Contrast and Repetition | |
| Dissonance and Resolution | |
| Rules for Success | |
| Rules for Mastering an Elemental Activity | |
| Music and Counting | |
| Difficulty of Counting | |
| How to Count | |
| Counting Education | |
| Computer-Assisted Moves | |
| Musician and Counter Employees | |
| Danger of End | |
| Chapter 15 The Ecology of Markets | p. 350 |
| The Field at the Board | |
| Ecological Principles | |
| Market Ecosystem | |
| Public Producers | |
| Managed Futures Public | |
| Other Publics | |
| Governmental Contributors | |
| The Primary Consumers | |
| Fixed-Income Herbivores | |
| Carnivores--Hedge Funds | |
| Decomposers | |
| Rules and Regulations | |
| Maintaining Rent | |
| Public's Bullishness | |
| The Gold Roller Coaster | |
| Competitive Exclusion | |
| Homeostatic Functions | |
| Finale | p. 383 |
| Some Brighton Bargains | |
| A Modern Panic | |
| Candlestick Analysis Punishment | |
| LoBagola | |
| Valuing the Goods | |
| Chinese Firedrill | |
| Artie's Last Game | |
| Going Dutch | |
| Please Hold All Seminar Tickets | |
| The Best Bargainer | |
| Trading Susan | |
| Doc Bo | |
| A Nixon Connection | |
| Consonant Dissonance | |
| Code of Brighton | |
| A Long Two Minutes | |
| Notes | p. 415 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 423 |
| Index | p. 429 |
