The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders

He Does It Again!

Very good follow up to the first market wizards i personally like the first one just a bit better but this one is right up there.

LuvOfMoney

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Tremendous respect for market opinion

This is a very good follow up to "The market wizards" published a few years before this one. One finds precious lessons from great traders like William Eckhardt, Randy Mc Kay, Victor Sperandeo, Tom Basso, the Ritchies, etc. One could argue that, deliberately or not, many other legendary traders have been left out of this book and its predecessor. Be it as it may, it's probably better to judge this book for what it is and not for what it could have been, and as such, I must say I find it really very interesting.

I can understand some of the criticism by the Amazon reviewers towards some of the traders methods or concepts. Every trader interviewed in this book represents a particular case, whether you agree with their methodology or not. And I guess everyone of them may be prone to criticism. But I won't be so pretentious to criticize any of them. After all, there are many ways to make money, and this is the main reason why these guys do what they do.

One trader that really stands out (in my mind) from the others though is Jeff Yass, and maybe that's because the part I was really interested in was option trading. The guy is a mathematician and a strategist. I was particularly impressed by his new (to me) insights, like "you can learn more about option trading strategy by playing poker than in all the college economics courses combined...the primary object being maximizing your gains and not winning most hands", "your senses deceive you...you always have to double-check the pretty obvious situations, cause there is never any money to be made in the obvious conclusions", "have a great deal of respect for the market opinion, since there's no way you can construct a model that can come close to being as informed as the market itself", "the market's pricing of an item is the best measure of its value", "information doesn't exactly flow perfectly, like they teach you in finance school...frequently the information will show up first in the option market", and many other gems of the like.

All in all a very good book on trading, maybe not as good as the first one, but frankly, what sequel ever is?

JS68

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Not as good as the original but still worth reading

Jack Schwager is a great author. He asks very intelligent questions and seems to have a deep though un-intuitive knowledge of the futures game. (See the CRT interview, overly analytical people mask intuitive traits). The William Eckhardt interview is incredible and should be re-read many times over. This interview alone is well worth the price of the book. I have one major gripe with the author however. Schwager seemed to have had a serious lapse in judgement by including some of the traders that he did. There is no doubt that all the traders interviewed in the book are of high caliber but some definetly cannot be thought of as "Market Wizards". Who am I talking about? Linda Raschke, Tom Basso, Charles Faulkner maybe even Trader Vic. Who is very underrated? Jeff Yass, the man is the best options player around. Druckenmiller, Trout, and Eckhardt are as good as it gets.These legendary names should not be sullied by the inclusion of the above mentioned traders. Schwager left out some amazing traders, what about the people at Kenzie, Niederhoffer ( I know he blew out), Louis Bacon, John Henry, Willem Kookyer and Grenville Craig? Anyone ever heard of Jullian Robertson? Please Jack, if you ever write Market Wizards 3, try to include all or even some of these people. Not traders that you speak with at "Omega" conferences.

ThomasJ

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Must Read!

The market wizards books are a must read for all traders. Regardless of what instrument you trade the best way to learn how to trade is to learn how other successful market players did it. This book will help show how the susccessful ones made it work. Add it to your library. You can't got wrong with the price either. it's a win win.

Live2trade

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My Follow up and proposed arguement on these books

Let's first understand something about mister Jack Schwager. Till this day he has almost without a doubt in my mind not been able to sufficiently acquire an income from his trading on a stand alone basis and has made his fortune off of selling his Market Wizards books. To further prove my point, if you want to see where Jack works today you only have to look to a site called fortunegrp.com. It's an investment banking company no different than the crooks at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

What he did in the time of writing and publishing his Market Wizards series was no different of a concept than the idea to sell shovels to all the gold diggers and dreamers during the gold rush. The only people who got rich were the suppliers. He like everyone else who has failed at trading decided to profit from it by selling information. But his approach was different this time. He sold the information told to him from the successful traders themselves, not his own system. Genius right? Well kinda if you only look at the surface. To further propound on his idea you'll notice that the people that Jack interviewed have been trading for at-least 8 years or more. Genius again, right? Now Jack can propose that trading is not a random act of luck and that, yes there are credible traders that have done well over a prolonged period of time. This makes any quick to conclude skeptics opinions, short lived.

Jack did quite well with the concept of his book. And with its allure of fast money making traders came many curious readers. The book is filled with interviews by chart traders which Jack himself was for over 20 years prior to his writings (also note that Jack hasn't had any consistent success chart trading himself, hence the reason for the book). Readers instantly believed that because he was able to find enough people that used charts to make money over a prolonged enough time period, that made technical analysis trading a viable method and would put to rest any skeptics opinions that they've never met a rich technician. But first let me note what he fails to mention about the markets in the years prior to his interviews with these so called super stock chart traders (I also would like to mention that not all of the people he interviewed were chart traders, some are actually valid investors with real life strategies that any intelligent person with half of a brain would recognize as something logical and real i.e. Jim Roger's interview). You see, most people would think, "Oh yea this profession is possible and look at all these technical analysis traders who made all this money after all these years. Wow they must have figured out a system or a discipline that was used by charting and pricing the right indicators or chart patterns, right!?" Wrong! Jack Schwager failed to mention the most important thing that would have made all his research nothing more than a failed attempt to prove that its not the amount of people you find that are successful that's relevant, but instead the time period in which you find them.

It's kind of like when the real estate or internet boom happened, most people that were lucky and dumb enough to chase these stocks to valuations never before seen and thought prices could never come down (these companies didn't even have revenue let me mind you, yet some of these companies traded at levels that made them worth more than the entire US economy at one point) got rich on paper faster than the logical intelligent minds of the business world had. Just as long as these same idiots were fearful enough to realize that this all felt to easy and made more money than they ever dreamed and (yet they didn't know a damn thing about the stocks or the markets they were trading in) got out, they managed to cash out enough money to continue to gamble away in the stock market and live very rich comfortable lives. Let me show you a chart of what the market averages had done since the idea of the book to the time of its publication. If it doesn't all make sense after this then your continuing to lie to yourselves, because your desire to get rich off of charts is greater than your thirst for truth. By the way, any one who is lazy enough to believe that by looking at a chart of a company is sufficient enough to make an investment decision, is completely delusional. Making money is not a game of drawing lines on a chart and whoever tells you this is trying to steal you for your money either by teaching you it, or having you subscribe to their services.

Go to http://marketsandpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/12/jack-schwagers-market-wizards-deception.html to get a visual of when this book was written relative to market performance.

MarketPolitics

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Informational

Picked up this book because Stanley Druckenmiller is in one of the interview, little did i know it has Jim Rogers and some insight of George Soros as well. The in depth strategies and the traders' insight is informational.

Bryanthlaw

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Entertainment above all

Goos book overall.

Dont expect to learn much though... its not the point, the goal of this book is to give you an insigth on the traders livestyle and how they achieve their riches.

Good for entertainment... and motivation!

Pedro_mfa

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As good as the first

love diving into both schwagers books - if you want an insight into the moinds of some great traders a must read

Nelson77

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Excellent sequel

Jack pulled it off again with another great book and the original market wizards was a tough act to follow. More interesting interviews with great traders with actionable ideas from each interview.

Bradlishman

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Quality info

Just finished reading the book. It is great trading advice condensed in the book. You'll know how top traders got there, what they did before and how they adjust their trading style and strategies throughout time. The one recurrent advice is, as most already know: "cut losses quickly" and stick to your plan, no matter what.

Go read it now!

Relaaax

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