Trade Like a Hedge Fund: 20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies and Techniques to Winning Profits

Another hedge fund stuff...

After last book on "More Money Than God", another hedge fund stuff is more than welcome at the moment. So, this book arrived at the right time...

End up... what a disappointing book! The first chapter on gap filling by chosen a short period of time to justify it, did enough to piss me off in the first place. Conditions (or filters) are then added to fine tune the whole stuff. However, in my humble opinion, it is more like an over-fitting rather than fine tuning. Would hedge fund behave this way? I do not think so...

Then, the author continues with spread trading. It reminds me of LTCM along the whole chapter. Again, fine tuning (over-fitting?) are involved. In surface, it does looks an improvements on LTCM model. However, it is too simple to apply in the sophisticated trading world. Well, hedge fund did tons of spread stuff. Hence, at least the author is not entirely wrong in this case. 

But, I am really not impressed with the following ideas on buy bankruptcy, tick stuff, the magic of 4 (this is the worst, I think), etc. The so called 20 successful uncorrelated strategies are not really my cup of tea. In fact, the whole idea of peeping into hedge fund does not serve its purpose at all.

This book only ate up little bit of my time. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. All discussed methods are not something unique. A novice like me could have done millions of back test on the said ideas. Well, it may help some traders (but, certainly not on my side). But, all the presented ideas do not suit my characters at all. (Hmm... this is why I am still a proprietor trader and not a hedge fund manager, LOL.) In fact, combinations of all techniques presented will need a team where team members must have different characters to execute well in order to achieve the final goal. So, is it possible? Hmm... Your guess is as good as mine... 

As a conclusion, I am going to rate this book at 0/10. Well, I do not discount the hard work done by the author. However, this book simply does not provide any single help to further improves me as a trader as well as better human beings. The title although attractive; but, I am really disappointed with this book...

More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite

More money than God? Wow, what a quote!!!

This book took me almost a month to finish up. Since I moved to Malacca and having spent a lot of time to settle down; my productivity levels in book reading was the worst throughout my entire life, LOL… These days, book reading is not my main activity. I was stuck with plenty of gardening stuff and jungle tracking. Well, I enjoyed it, in fact…The situation get worse with World Cup kicked off at the wrong time, LOL. The results so far suggested that this could be one of the most exciting tournament (Dead tiki-taka finally? LOL). As such, I guess I need to reorganize my time to sleep less, reduce the Tarik session and reduce nonsense talk session in order to get back to my optimum level of productivity at least, LOL.

Frankly, the time taken on this book was very much worth it. In the first glance, I thought this is a book about how to earn more money than hedge fund. End up; it was a details chronology of hedge fund stories from day one it worked until the famous subprime crisis.  Well, I guess many are familiar with this sort of stories. However, to have a book that recorded full details on the ups and downs of hedge fund journeys is amazing. Furthermore, the author views the whole thing subjectively even though he is obviously against the whole hedge fund industries (I guess so). This is by far the clearest discussions that I ever read based on incredible research and interviews. At the end of reading, readers might find that they had indirectly travelled along with those legends in the book. Thumbs up for the author in providing such an excellent write up.

Seriously, I like this book so much that I am going to rate it at 10/10. This book is an essential book and a “must” read for traders and anyone who are keen to explore further in the field of investments. Last but not least, listed below are some of the excellent quotes exerted from the book. Some food for thought today…

Market forecasters could not sustain their performance. The very act of forecasting a trend was likely to destroy it… forecasters would speed up the workings of the market while working themselves out of a job.

Kovner once argues that the most profitable opportunities arise when you have no fundamental information.

Soros saw no point in knowing everything about a few stocks in the hope of anticipating small moves; the game was to know a little about a lot of things, so that you could spot the places where the big wave might be coming.

The larger the fund grew, the harder it became to jump in and out of markets without disrupting prices and damaging themselves in the process.

The equity investors came from a culture dominated by fundamental analysis. The commodity traders came from a culture dominated by charts and trend following.

There is no skill in coin flipping – and investment is no different.

The real lesson of LTCM’s failure was not that its approach to risk was too simple. It was that all attempts to be precise about risk are unavoidable brittle.

Even though LTCM shrouded itself in secrecy, routing its trades through multiple brokers so that none of them could understand its bets, an army of imitators had pieced together much of its strategy.

“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” Keynes famously declared. Being early and right is the same as being wrong, as investors have repeatedly discovered.

Widespread knowledge of the hedge fund’s holdings contributed to their troubles. Commentators who insist that hedge-fund transparency would stabilize markets might usefully ponder this lesson. 

期货实战英雄录

这本英雄录挺好笑的。。。在网络上游览时，怎么看都觉得这本书应该是一本很厚的书籍吧。结果，从衡河网直接寄到我家时，约220页的这本书籍怎么就没想像中的“厚”？六届获奖者的启示录200多页就能够交代清楚了吗？老实说，拿到这本书的那一刻，还真的挺失望的。。。

读完后，果真很失望！这本书的编辑一开始就有点凌乱。感觉上，每则故事都是曾经在哪里刊登过，而出版社就连修改也懒的修改就直接印刷出来了。所以，整本书的连贯性遭透了！再来，获奖启示录是有启示录的感觉；但，精髓就不太明显。每一则有血有泪的故事，一读完就没什么印象。而启发性来说，更是少之有少！总之，感觉就是在看着一本无关痛痒的杂志似的。

或许，这一类书籍毕竟不是关于大师级的启示录。里头的英雄顶多也只是比赛里的英雄。别误会，我没有小看英雄们的伟绩。但是，整本书的启发性不只不行，里头的所谓技术还很容易让新手走火入魔。当然，老手懂得分辨是与非。但，有多少老手还在阅读这类书籍呢？

还好，最后一章“期市名人”至少帮作者挽回了一些些。。。这一章是我读的最有印象，也最令我感触的一章。可能，受访的“名人”开始有大师级的风范。因此，感觉上没前面比赛中访问的那么肤浅。

很可惜。。。这本书本来应该是一本蛮值得探讨的书籍。结果，出版社好像没那么用心的去编辑。比起【期货英雄】和【期货英雄2】，这本启示录真的很逊色。因此，满分10分，我最多打个2分。这2分纯粹赠于最后“期市名人”的那一章。好失望的一本书籍。。。