The Education of a Speculator

"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

Amazon.com Review
What you typically hear about Victor Niederhoffer is that he trades for "the great Soros," that he doesn't wear shoes in his office, that the only newspaper he reads is the National Enquirer, and that a picture of the Titanic hangs in his office.

That's all true. But it's the logic behind the eccentricities that is the real story. The Education of a Speculator is a sojourn inside the one-of-a-kind mind of Victor Niederhoffer, a trader in commodities and a keen observer of life. He has trained himself to look at the world in a singular fashion: where the guy on the street sees opportunity, Niederhoffer has scoped out all the downsides and done the contrarian thinking necessary to turn a profit. Niederhoffer draws material from disciplines as varied as biology, music, cards, and sports. His book, written with humor and verve, offers readers a chance to see the world through his lenses. The result is a genuinely new perspective on life (unless you too happened to grow up a speculator). This is a terrific, rewarding book.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Don't buy if you're looking for a daytrading book, 2008-08-12
This is just an autobiography filled with tons of boring information about Neidderhoffer. I really expected more. Some insight on how to come up with good ideas, something, anything. No delivery.


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Don't waste your money, 2008-05-05
What a disappointment. The book barely qualifies as a book on speculation. Instead, it is a long winded, rambling account of the author's (non-investing) life; after page upon page devoted to a topic other than speculating/investing (e.g. sports) he attempts to draw some parallel between the subject in question (e.g. sports) and speculating/investing. All too often, the analogies/parallels are weak to non-existent. For a book supposedly dedicated to speculating, remarkably little of it actually deals with this topic. There can be no doubt the author has tremendous knowledge; he simply choses not to share it with his readers in this offering. Don't waste your money.


0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Useless rubbish, 2007-08-28
Meandering nonsense that tells the reader nothing about how to speculate in anything. The author claims it is in there but between the lines as he cannot give away his secrets. Well, he does not. A waste of money for someone wanting to learn how to trade.


5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Richard Feynman of Finance, 2007-04-04
I've worked in physics and am heading for a career in finance. In these fields you occasionally run into that guy. The guy who is either so smart nobody can understand him, or he's a manic-depressive frothing in a mania stage. Either way, "that guy's" nervous system is obviously wired to a higher pitch than mine ever will be; at least without chemical additives or surgury. Reading the book is like talking to that scary smart manic guy. It's always humbling running into "that guy." Niederhoffer is that guy. He ranges wildly from stories of his colorful youth in a working class neighborhood in NYC (which actually did remind me of Feynman's stories) to horse racing, to squash, to trading FOREX. He goes so fast, you can barely keep up with him, even in a leisurely read. Why is he talking about handball? I thought he was just talking about liquidity? Checkers? And how does Jesse Livermore fit in? Read it and see.

Niederhoffer is the type of man I admire the most; he has physical courage, he's brilliant, he loves his family and friends, he beats the system with wit and street smarts and he comes from humble means. He managed to get a system for gaming the GPA named after him. He was a world champion at Squash. He was an early pioneer of direct marketing private equity funds. He was an early skeptic of the efficient market hypothesis (what would traders get paid for if the markets were efficient?). He was a professor at U.C. Berkeley. He built (and lost, in a story I hope the next edition of his book documents, and, stunningly, built again) a great fortune. His story is completely mind boggling; the world is a better place for his having lived his story in it, and you'll be a better person for absorbing his insights about the world.

Beyond my gushing over his yarn spinning, if you're a careful reader, and you know something about markets, you can pick up some pretty serious insight from his descriptions of his day to day work. The only other book I got a feel for the markets like this was Larry Harris' book on Trading and Exchanges, and that was nowhere near as much fun to read.


4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Certainly a Well Deserved Spot In Your Library, 2007-03-17
As many already know, Niederhoffer has had quite a volatile, and highly publicized career as a speculator. But it is pure naivety and ignorance for people to brush his work off merely because of the two blow ups he had in his fund. In fact, if anything, these two events have, in my opinion, made Niederhoffer's perspective exponentially more valuable than most modern financial literature on the subject.

With that said, I must disagree with his view on statistical inference and its role in market speculation. Although statistical inference is valid as a data point, when one uses it as their primary and sole validation of any trade premise, the risk they expose themselves to is far too high. The foundation of his theories are based on using prior statistical probabilities to validate a trade. In other words, if the odds of a trade blowing up in your face are 1 in 1000, then it's a good trade. But if you don't consider what is going on in the macro environment, the overall sentiment of market participants, and other "subjective" data sets, then you risk exposing yourself to a situation where you make a massive long bet on the S&P futures at a time when the market is in a freefall because of some geo-political and/or financial event such as a Russian debt default, or Asian financial meltdown. This is the scenario that blew Niederhoffer up, but the interesting thing to note is that the "trade" itself had already caused significant loss in a prior event. So what does that tell you about statistical inference?

The value in this book is what you gain from his anectdotes and insights. Although he has a tendancy to go off on a tangent and lose you, if you can keep your focus, this book will provide you with invaluable insight into the mind of one of this generations most experienced market operators.

And his comparison of a classical symphony with the Japanese Yen is priceless, and can be worth the price of this book in itself.

I have personally read this book over 5 times by now, and I'm sure I'll read it again.

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