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Description of The New Market Wizards

Like its predecessor "Market Wizards", this book offers practical advice on investing from some of the most prestigious Wall Street professional in a personal, anecdotal style. With inside stories of both the brilliant successes and the self-inflicted failures experienced by some of the biggest traders and investors in the game, Jack Schwager shows even small investors how to avoid pitfalls and make the most of their money.

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Title Information

ISBN:

9780887306679

Pages:

512 pages

Format:

Paperback

Product Code:

0167

Publisher:

HarperBusiness

Published:

31/01/1994

Edition:

1st Edition

Financial Guru Reviews

Published in 1992 as a follow up to the hugely successful "Market Wizards", this book continues the clever theme of interviewing very successful and usually highly illusive traders and investors. As with the original volume, this book is full of market wisdom and in particular I like Schwager's own writings at the beginning and end of the book. Especially the first three points in the Preface,

"1 - The markets are not random. I don't care if the number of academicians who have argued the efficient market hypothesis would stretch to the moon and back if laid end to end; they are simply wrong.

2 - The markets are not random, because they are based on human behavior, and human behavior, especially mass behavior, is not random. It never has been, and it probably never will be.

3 - There is no holy grail or grand secret to the markets, but there are many patterns that can lead to profits."

I agree one hundred percent.
Mark Shipman

Press and Industry Reviews

"Are great traders born or do they acquire their skills on the way up?...."
- Wall Street Journal

"Provides unique insight into the arcane world of currency trading as well as other fast-moving markets such as options and commodities."
- U.S. News & World Report

"Very interesting indeed."
- John Train, author of the Money Masters

"Should be required reading for anyone who selects managers for institutional or even personal portfolios."
- Futures Industry

Reviews

• Jack Schwager's "New Market Wizards" is somewhat of an investment classic. He sits down with a select band of traders and investment managers and tries to find out how they make so much money. For utter novices this is a good book. It should say to them, "are you a compulsive with a maths degree, because if you are not, go away and get into statistics and perhaps learn to program while you are at it." Sadly most people will only see the more mystical theme repeated throughout the book, that winning is in your psychology. This is a common theme in get rich quick literature of all sorts, so it grates with me. This is magical thinking. The market is often a negative sum game, especially for speculators outside of equities markets and it performs just like a fruit machine. It doesn't matter how you feel, a fruit machine will take all your money, unless you cheat, find a glitch or own the machine. Psychology has little or nothing to do with it. The preface of the book repeats that 'the market is not random' twice, Schwager clearly means you to know this, but maintains that the markets are 'always changing,' I find this apparent contradiction rather worrying for a statement of principle. Then in the same sentence the author feels that markets are also 'always the same.' I'm glad I didn't learn science this way. Within a couple of pages we are being told, in a Zen like way, to shut up and listen. Happily in a Zen like mood myself I had started reading the book from the back, so had avoided the baloney in the front. Otherwise the book would have found the calm inner centre of my bin. As "New Market Wizards" is a collection of interviews with an intro and summation, its easy to dip into. The chapters are mainly 'war stories,' which in themselves are amusing in a 'talk show' kind of way. However there is little to 'take away' from them, unless you try to parse and whittle the information down to the concrete. I came away with a lot less than the 42 guidelines Schwager proffers at the end. Schwager needs to disbelieve 'random walk theory,' as many of his interviewees might be discounted as simply lucky. However of the solid nuggets in the book, like the relevance of Black Jack to trading, keeping transaction costs to the minimum, the importance of execution, exploiting systemic inefficiencies, many come straight out of the 'random walk' play-book. If you don't know about these already, its worth ploughing through 500 pages for. Believing that 'thinking right' is the way to make money in the markets, seems in tune with Wizardry, but at odds to a game where the quality of your analysis and power of your tools is paramount. In the end I don't care what your state of mind is, if I get the news first or can trade faster or cheaper than you, I'm going to make all the money. The New Market Wizards is a very nineties book. Reading it, recalled to me the boom when the markets just went up and cab drivers wanted to tell you about their tech share profits. New Market Wizards is for Old Market Muppets.
  K Cox

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Contents of The New Market Wizards

Part I: Trading Perspectives
Misadventures in Trading
Hussein Makes a Bad Trade

Part II: The World's Biggest Market
Bill Lipschutz: The Sultan of Currencies

Part III: Futures - The Variety-Pack Market
Futures - Understanding the Basics
Randy McKay - Veteran Trader
William Eckhardt: The Mathematician
The Silence of the Turtles
Monroe Trust: The Best Return That Low Risk Can Buy
Al Weiss: The Human Chart Encyclopaedia

Part IV: Fund Managers and Timers
Stanley Druckenmiller: The Art of Top-Down Investing
Richard Driehaus: The Art of Bottom-Up Investing
Gil Blake: The Master of Consistency
Victor Sperandeo: Markets Grow Old Too

Part V: Multiple-Market Players
Tom Basso: Mr. Serenity
Linda Bradford Raschke: Reading the Music of the Markets

Part VI: The Money Machines
CRT: The Trading Machine
Mark Ritchie: God in the Pits
Joe Ritchie: The Intuitive Theoretician
Blair Hull: Getting the Edge
Jeff Yass: The Mathematics of Strategy

Part VII: The Psychology of Trading
Zen and the Art of Trading
Charles Faulkner: The Mind of an Achiever
Robert Krausz: The Role of the Subconscious

Part VIII: Closing Bell