Synopses & Reviews
What differentiates the highly successful market practitionersthe Market Wizardsfrom ordinary traders? What traits do they share? What lessons can the average trader learn from those who achieved superior returns for decades while still maintaining strict risk control? Jack Schwager has spent the past 25 years interviewing the market legends in search of the answersa quest chronicled in four prior
Market Wizards volumes totaling nearly 2,000 pages.
In The Little Book of Market Wizards, Jack Schwager seeks to distill what he considers the essential lessons he learned in conducting nearly four dozen interviews with some of the world's best traders. The book delves into the mindset and processes of highly successful traders, providing insights that all traders should find helpful in improving their trading skills and results. Each chapter focuses on a specific theme essential to market success and describes how all market participants can benefit by incorporating the related traits, behaviors, and philosophies of the Market Wizards in their own trading. The book is filled with compelling anecdotes that bring the trading messages to life, and direct quotes from the market greats that resonate with the wisdom born of experience and skill.
Stepping clearly outside the narrow confines of most investment books, The Little Book of Market Wizards focuses on the value of understanding one's self within the context of successful investing. For an in-depth view of the art of investing and how to adopt the practices of top professionals, Schwager's Little Book is one of the best, most entertaining guides out there.
Synopsis
Whether you're an active trader, or simply want a better understanding of how to succeed in today's markets, you'll benefit from the wisdom and insight renowned "Traders' Hall of Fame" award winner. Now, Jack Schwager hands you the strategies of the most sought after traders. Through his bestselling Market Wizards books, Schwager has probed the minds of the world's most respected investors, studying their personal traits and learning the secret techniques that have turned them into investment role models. Now a professional investor and successful fund manager in his own right, Schwager shares his own secrets, along with those of his prominent "Wizards."
This book will enable you to master the fine art of trading as you discover and apply the key methods and traits shared by the world's most acclaimed traders. Find critical, yet often overlooked factors for understanding:
* How to avoid losing faith during down markets, and confidently pull profits in any market condition
* The dangers of overtrading--how to react when no position is the right position
* The value of "self-analysis" for finding a trading method that fits your personality and goals
* The real risk in volatility
* How to develop the habit of "disloyalty"
* Why you MUST learn how to change directions--and how to do it quickly
Plus, the keys to developing discipline, good money management skills, and avoiding the risks inherent in second-guessing your own system--all learned from the Market Wizards themselves and revealed here for you.
Synopsis
An accessible look at the art of investing and how to adopt the practices of top professionals What differentiates the highly successful market practitioners--the Market Wizards--from ordinary traders? What traits do they share? What lessons can the average trader learn from those who achieved superior returns for decades while still maintaining strict risk control? Jack Schwager has spent the past 25 years interviewing the market legends in search of the answers--a quest chronicled in four prior Market Wizards volumes totaling nearly 2,000 pages.
In The Little Book of Market Wizards, Jack Schwager seeks to distill what he considers the essential lessons he learned in conducting nearly four dozen interviews with some of the world's best traders. The book delves into the mindset and processes of highly successful traders, providing insights that all traders should find helpful in improving their trading skills and results.
- Each chapter focuses on a specific theme essential to market success
- Describes how all market participants can benefit by incorporating the related traits, behaviors, and philosophies of the Market Wizards in their own trading
- Filled with compelling anecdotes that bring the trading messages to life, and direct quotes from the market greats that resonate with the wisdom born of experience and skill
Stepping clearly outside the narrow confines of most investment books, The Little Book of Market Wizards focuses on the value of understanding one's self within the context of successful investing.
Synopsis
Praise for The Little Book of Market Wizards"Jack Schwager has written some of the classics in the investment field and this latest may be the best of them all. His books were very influential on me as a young trader. I still reread them today for reminders of hard-learned lessons and also for new inspiration. Schwager's ability to coax the best traders into revealing their methods is legendary and this Little Book distills these lessons into a thorough, organized, and fascinating set of lessons that I will be giving to every aspiring trader I know."
—COLM O'SHEA, Founding Partner and CIO, COMAC Capital LLP
"Jack Schwager has done it again. His Little Book is insightful, enlightening, and ultimately invaluable."
—JOEL GREENBLATT, Managing Principal, Gotham Asset Management; author of The Little Book that Beats the Market
"In his Little Book of Market Wizards, Jack Schwager presents the essence of trading as a series of colorful anecdotes that get right to the point and stay with you."
—ED SEYKOTA
"No author—living or deceased—has created such a rich archive of printed material on the profession of market speculation as has Jack Schwager. An entire generation of speculators owes a debt to the Market Wizards series and to Jack for at least some portion of its success. The Little Book of Market Wizards brings remarkably new dimensions that only Jack Schwager could tease out of his extensive interviews with the trading greats."
—PETER L. BRANDT, trader, from the Foreword
About the Author
JACK D. SCHWAGER is a recognized industry expert in futures and hedge funds and the author of a number of widely acclaimed financial books. He is currently a principal of PortfolioFit (portfoliofitadvisors.com), an advisory firm that specializes in constructing tailor-made futures and FX managed account portfolios for clients, and the co-portfolio manager for the ADM Investor Services Diversified Strategies Fund, a portfolio of futures and FX managed accounts. Mr. Schwager is also one of the founders of Fund Seeder (Fundseeder.com), a platform designed to find undiscovered trading talent worldwide and connect unknown successful traders with sources of investment capital.
Mr. Schwager is the inventor of the Jack Schwager Commodity Index (JSCI) family, a set of dynamically adjusted commodity indexes that incorporate spread structure, systematic inputs, and volatility-based risk adjustments. The indexes are scheduled to be launched in early 2014 in cooperation with Aquantum AG and UBS.
Mr. Schwager is perhaps best known for his best-selling series of interviews with the greatest hedge fund managers of the last three decades: Market Wizards (1989), The New Market Wizards (1992), Stock Market Wizards (2001), and Hedge Fund Market Wizards (2012). His latest book Market Sense and Nonsense, a compendium of investment misconceptions, was published in November 2012. He is also the author of the three-volume Schwager on Futures series and Getting Started in Technical Analysis. Mr. Schwager is a frequent seminar speaker and has lectured on a range of analytical topics including the characteristics of great traders, investment fallacies, hedge fund portfolios, managed accounts, technical analysis, and trading system evaluation.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Peter L. Brandt xi
Preface xv
Chapter One: Failure Is Not Predictive 1
Chapter Two: What Is Not Important 9
Chapter Three: Trading Your Own Personality 15
Chapter Four: The Need for an Edge 23
Chapter Five: The Importance of Hard Work 27
Chapter Six: Good Trading Should Be Effortless 35
Chapter Seven: The Worst of Times, the Best of Times 41
Chapter Eight: Risk Management 47
Chapter Nine: Discipline 61
Chapter Ten: Independence 69
Chapter Eleven: Confidence 73
Chapter Twelve: Losing Is Part of the Game 77
Chapter Thirteen: Patience 83
Chapter Fourteen: No Loyalty 93
Chapter Fifteen: Size Matters 103
Chapter Sixteen: Doing the Uncomfortable Thing 115
Chapter Seventeen: Emotions and Trading 125
Chapter Eighteen: Dynamic versus Static Trading 135
Chapter Nineteen: Market Response 145
Chapter Twenty: The Value of Mistakes 157
Chapter Twenty-One: Implementation versus Idea 163
Chapter Twenty-Two: Off the Hook 167
Chapter Twenty-Three: Love of the Endeavor 173
Appendix: Options—Understanding the Basics 177
Notes 185
About the Author 189