Latest / Masters in Business / Interview With Jack Schwager: Masters in Business (Audio)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by B A. S F. We create chemistry.
- 0:07Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
- 0:11Speaker 1: Welcome to the one addition of the Masters in Business
- 0:16Speaker 1: podcast here on Bloomberg Radio. I am so thrilled and
- 0:20Speaker 1: excited to have hit this milestone if you would have
- 0:25Speaker 1: told me when we began what really started as a
- 0:29Speaker 1: skunk works project on the down low. Quick digression as
- 0:35Speaker 1: to how this podcast came about. Tim O'Brien, who runs
- 0:39Speaker 1: Bloomberg View and Bloomberg Gadfly, He's the one who set
- 0:42Speaker 1: it up. Uh was recruiting me to, uh come right
- 0:48Speaker 1: from Bloomberg and I said, listen, you guys have a website.
- 0:51Speaker 1: I have a website. Why do I wanna publish for
- 0:55Speaker 1: for you guys instead of on my own site? And
- 0:57Speaker 1: he said, well, look at this fantastic playground that we
- 1:01Speaker 1: have here at Bloomberg. Look at the technology, the facilities.
- 1:05Speaker 1: I have to tell you that was really a very
- 1:07Speaker 1: persuasive argument. The Bloomberg Building, if you've never been, is
- 1:12Speaker 1: it's mind blowing. It is a purpose built technology and
- 1:17Speaker 1: media high rise in the middle of midtown. It's really
- 1:21Speaker 1: an amazing, amazing place. And if there's any way you
- 1:24Speaker 1: could find uh, the opportunity to come here professionally, you should.
- 1:28Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. And when Tim was showing me around
- 1:33Speaker 1: the facilities, I noticed all these super cool um radio
- 1:38Speaker 1: booths and studios. Now I've been to the Bloomberg Building
- 1:42Speaker 1: numerous times before. I've been on the radio here, I've
- 1:44Speaker 1: been on the Bloomberg TV set, I've been here for conferences,
- 1:48Speaker 1: so I'm somewhat familiar with the space. But when you're
- 1:52Speaker 1: looking at it not as just a guest who's blowing
- 1:56Speaker 1: in and out in order to do a television show,
- 1:58Speaker 1: but as a facility. The if that someone says, hey,
- 2:01Speaker 1: you have access to all all of these really cool toys,
- 2:05Speaker 1: you see it from a slightly different perspective. And so
- 2:08Speaker 1: when we started chit chatting about what we could actually
- 2:12Speaker 1: do with these facilities, I started to get all sorts
- 2:16Speaker 1: of interesting, interesting ideas, the first of which was I
- 2:22Speaker 1: would love to do a podcast and actually talk to
- 2:26Speaker 1: some of the most intelligent and influential and important people
- 2:31Speaker 1: in the industry in business and finance on Wall Street. Uh.
- 2:35Speaker 1: We kicked a few ideas around. Someone had suggested, how
- 2:38Speaker 1: about a television show I said, no, go get Joe.
- 2:41Speaker 1: Reason thought to do that. I don't want to do TV.
- 2:43Speaker 1: I I don't want to wear a suit and tie
- 2:46Speaker 1: every day, and I want to shave. I don't want
- 2:47Speaker 1: to have to go on a diet. Um. I've dropped
- 2:50Speaker 1: about twenty pounds, but to do TV I would have
- 2:52Speaker 1: to drop another twenty and that would be a lot
- 2:54Speaker 1: of work. So when they said what do you want
- 2:57Speaker 1: to do? My answer was I'm want to sit with
- 3:00Speaker 1: these people and have an adult conversation about important things. Well, podcast,
- 3:06Speaker 1: what do you mean? And the elevator pitch was Mark
- 3:10Speaker 1: Marin's WTF meets Charlie Rose. But I went back and
- 3:14Speaker 1: looked at my notes, and my notes said a podcast
- 3:18Speaker 1: version of Jack Schweger's Market Wizards. And that was really
- 3:24Speaker 1: the motivation for this show. And so who better to
- 3:30Speaker 1: do our hundred podcast? Then the man the legend himself,
- 3:35Speaker 1: Jack Schweger. He is the author of numerous market wizards books.
- 3:40Speaker 1: The first one is Market Wizards, the second one is
- 3:43Speaker 1: New Market Wizards, the third one is Hedge Fund Wizards. Uh,
- 3:47Speaker 1: plus a number of of different books on options and
- 3:50Speaker 1: trading and futures. And you know he he has been
- 3:53Speaker 1: a trader his whole career, and and the writing and
- 3:56Speaker 1: editing started as a sort of side project, but obviously
- 4:00Speaker 1: it blew up on its own. Um A quick another
- 4:03Speaker 1: digression about Jack and I. So, I don't know. I'm
- 4:08Speaker 1: a new being in the industry. I'm around for less
- 4:10Speaker 1: than ten years. The first book anybody gives me UM
- 4:16Speaker 1: to read when I'm studying for my series seven a
- 4:19Speaker 1: hundred years ago, uh was Market Wizards, and I just
- 4:22Speaker 1: devoured it. And I wasn't fascinated by the fact that
- 4:26Speaker 1: all these different traders and fund managers in all these
- 4:29Speaker 1: different fields somewhere commodities, somewhere where equities, somewhere, bonds, somewhere,
- 4:34Speaker 1: more complex products, somewhere really simple strategies. There was a
- 4:39Speaker 1: theme that ran through all of these interviews. And so
- 4:43Speaker 1: not only did I devour the first book, but I
- 4:46Speaker 1: reread it every five years. I find it to be
- 4:49Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating. And the second time I read it, I
- 4:53Speaker 1: want to say that was nine or two thousand or
- 4:55Speaker 1: something like that, I decided to do something I almost
- 5:00Speaker 1: never do, which is write a review on Amazon dot
- 5:04Speaker 1: Com for the book, and you'll see, other than whining
- 5:08Speaker 1: about you know, a poorly made product. I almost never
- 5:12Speaker 1: do book reviews. Uh, I got stuff to do. I
- 5:15Speaker 1: would rather read books than write book reviews. So I
- 5:19Speaker 1: happened to be so moved by market Wizards that I
- 5:21Speaker 1: wrote a review of it. This was I don't know
- 5:24Speaker 1: one oh three something like that and posting on Amazon
- 5:28Speaker 1: completely forget about it. Fast forward to episode I don't
- 5:32Speaker 1: know fift something like that, and Jack Schwager is one
- 5:36Speaker 1: of our early guests. He was nice enough to come on,
- 5:39Speaker 1: and he not only reminds me that I wrote a
- 5:43Speaker 1: review of market Wizards for Amazon, but yeah, Amazon does
- 5:48Speaker 1: this sort of crowdsourcing thing where you could thumbs up
- 5:51Speaker 1: or thumbs down a review, And it turned out that
- 5:55Speaker 1: the readers of the Amazon page on market Wizards had
- 5:59Speaker 1: made that at the top review of market Wizards. Go
- 6:03Speaker 1: to Amazon click positive reviews. It's the first one, Jack says,
- 6:08Speaker 1: it's it's been the first one for over a decade.
- 6:11Speaker 1: Who knew. Just one of those funny little ironies. Fifteen
- 6:15Speaker 1: years ago, I wrote a review of a book that
- 6:18Speaker 1: I thought was really really interesting and important, and now
- 6:23Speaker 1: in it turns out that our one guests on Bloomberg
- 6:28Speaker 1: Radio's Masters in Business show and podcast is the same
- 6:34Speaker 1: gentleman Jack Schweger. So with tremendous amount of excitement, I
- 6:40Speaker 1: am thrilled to present our podcast here. He is author
- 6:47Speaker 1: and trader Jack Schweger. This is Masters in Business with
- 6:54Speaker 1: Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. I have a special guest
- 6:59Speaker 1: today who is should be very well known if you
- 7:03Speaker 1: are an investor or trader and like to read books
- 7:06Speaker 1: about the craft. His name is Jack Schwager, and I
- 7:11Speaker 1: have to tell you the first book I have received
- 7:14Speaker 1: in the industry when I began was Market Wizards. I
- 7:17Speaker 1: make it a point to reread it every five years
- 7:20Speaker 1: or so. There are now three versions. There's Market Wizards,
- 7:24Speaker 1: New Market Wizards, and Hedge Fund Wizards, as well as
- 7:27Speaker 1: an audio book of actually all of them are three
- 7:31Speaker 1: are now Jack Schweger. Welcome to bloom Thank you very
- 7:35Speaker 1: good to be here again. So so I really didn't
- 7:37Speaker 1: give your your background and introduction enough of a play up.
- 7:42Speaker 1: You're you're in addition to being an author, you're a trader.
- 7:46Speaker 1: You've written a number of books on technical trading and
- 7:49Speaker 1: future trading along those lines as well as an entrepreneur.
- 7:54Speaker 1: I cannot under estimate I cannot under emphasize how influential
- 8:01Speaker 1: Market Wizards was. When when did the first book, first
- 8:04Speaker 1: Market Wizars came out, and how many copies has that,
- 8:09Speaker 1: you know, printings? It first of all, has been translated
- 8:11Speaker 1: in so many language I mean weird language, I mean
- 8:14Speaker 1: languages I wouldn't all expect, like Turkish and Croatian and
- 8:17Speaker 1: the Vietnamese and whatever. You know. So, and you have
- 8:20Speaker 1: no idea they sell these books. They make it a
- 8:23Speaker 1: contract and you have no idea what it sells. So
- 8:25Speaker 1: and the China and China is like there's two official
- 8:28Speaker 1: language versions, not to count the bootleg versions. But that's
- 8:31Speaker 1: true of everything. But absolutely, when whenever someone talks about China,
- 8:35Speaker 1: there should be implied in parentheses not to count the
- 8:39Speaker 1: bootlet that's that's that's a given. So in other words,
- 8:42Speaker 1: but I would guess, I would guess between all the
- 8:44Speaker 1: you know, all the books I've written globally, i'd say
- 8:47Speaker 1: probably a couple of million sold. That's huge. And for
- 8:51Speaker 1: those people who may not be familiar with Market Wizards,
- 8:54Speaker 1: the premise of the book is essentially, let's speak to
- 8:59Speaker 1: some some very six sucessful investors and traders and see
- 9:02Speaker 1: how they do and what their secret sources and what's
- 9:06Speaker 1: fascinating In the book, you spoke to people who are
- 9:09Speaker 1: commodities traders, bond traders, equity traders, currency traders, and there
- 9:14Speaker 1: were some really consistent themes. No matter what these people
- 9:18Speaker 1: were doing, whether whether they were long term investors or
- 9:21Speaker 1: or the shortest of short term traders, certain themes came
- 9:24Speaker 1: out in the book over and over again, right, And
- 9:27Speaker 1: and that was what I was trying to do. I
- 9:28Speaker 1: was write, what is the secret source, what separates this
- 9:31Speaker 1: group of extremely successful successful and just off the child
- 9:35Speaker 1: and some of them, I mean just extraordinary and and
- 9:38Speaker 1: and the people I've interviewed included sort of the most
- 9:40Speaker 1: famous traders. We're gonna go into the specifics about some
- 9:45Speaker 1: of them, Okay a few minutes. So so as far
- 9:47Speaker 1: as the the lessons, and there are tons of them.
- 9:50Speaker 1: And I probably in the later books when I did summaries,
- 9:53Speaker 1: I might have had, like, you know, forty points forty points,
- 9:57Speaker 1: and you had all or if you had ad all
- 9:59Speaker 1: the like all the common denominators, I wouldn't be surprised
- 10:02Speaker 1: if it got close to a hundred. So it's kind
- 10:04Speaker 1: of hard to just say which ones, but what the
- 10:07Speaker 1: fact that they were radically different from each other was
- 10:11Speaker 1: maybe one of the most important common denominators, because what
- 10:14Speaker 1: it spoke to is they each found their own way.
- 10:17Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times people, uh, you know,
- 10:20Speaker 1: we'll ask me or write me, what traders should I follow?
- 10:24Speaker 1: That's right, what trader should I follow? Or who's the
- 10:26Speaker 1: best trader you know? And and you know to me
- 10:29Speaker 1: that that's it has no that question has no answer,
- 10:32Speaker 1: And the question actually makes no sense. It makes no
- 10:34Speaker 1: more sense than somebody calling me and asking me, I've
- 10:37Speaker 1: got to go buy a suit, what side should I get?
- 10:39Speaker 1: And I've never seen the person. I mean, it's as
- 10:41Speaker 1: relevant to question as that. So these people found would
- 10:45Speaker 1: work for them, and it was always different. So let's
- 10:47Speaker 1: talk about a couple of themes though that run through
- 10:50Speaker 1: all the traders. Let's let's start with discipline, probably the
- 10:53Speaker 1: single most important lesson at least that I took. What
- 10:58Speaker 1: was the general take on being a disciplined persson when
- 11:02Speaker 1: I asked? I asked that question to a lot, you know,
- 11:04Speaker 1: some questions I I tried to count the interviews and
- 11:07Speaker 1: conversational format. You know what you're like? You you do right?
- 11:10Speaker 1: So we'll discuss. You are the inspiration, so and you know,
- 11:14Speaker 1: don't start. I would have like questions sort of back up,
- 11:17Speaker 1: you know, but I'd like talk and talk, you know,
- 11:19Speaker 1: and sometimes going at two days of conversation sometimes and
- 11:22Speaker 1: only the end would I like, look, did I miss anything?
- 11:24Speaker 1: And usually nothing, you know, usually picked up everything. So, um,
- 11:30Speaker 1: I got off a tangent to it. I was kind
- 11:32Speaker 1: on The original question was on discipline. Discipline, right, So
- 11:36Speaker 1: one question I asked, did ask everybody or just about
- 11:40Speaker 1: is what what separates you know? What differentiate too? What? What?
- 11:43Speaker 1: Why are you different? And and discipline was the single
- 11:47Speaker 1: most answered, you know, answer to that. That was the
- 11:51Speaker 1: most common answer to that question was discipline. Now, when
- 11:54Speaker 1: let's let's dig in a little bit. When they say
- 11:56Speaker 1: their disciplines, are they referring to keeping them most in check?
- 12:00Speaker 1: Are they referring to I have a methodology and I
- 12:03Speaker 1: find it follow it no matter what? What did they mean?
- 12:06Speaker 1: And and those two are not separate? Um? Yeah, but
- 12:09Speaker 1: they mean primarily I've got a methronology and I'm not
- 12:12Speaker 1: gonna straight from it. And I know you at your
- 12:14Speaker 1: trader and I'm I'm a trader. And but anybody's trade
- 12:17Speaker 1: and knows this that if you if you've got an
- 12:19Speaker 1: approach that sort of work. And to be clear, no
- 12:22Speaker 1: approach work, no, no approach works any great amount of time.
- 12:27Speaker 1: Everything falls into that affairs just just a question of probabilities.
- 12:30Speaker 1: But if you've got an approach that over time probabilities
- 12:33Speaker 1: are in your favor and you make more money than
- 12:35Speaker 1: you lose and you keep control. If you've got that
- 12:38Speaker 1: approach and you've got rules or trades that you do, uh,
- 12:43Speaker 1: and you're losing some of them, that's fine because you're
- 12:45Speaker 1: gonna lose on a certain percentage. But when you do
- 12:47Speaker 1: stuff that is counter to what you're supposed to do,
- 12:49Speaker 1: like well, I got, I got. This is how I
- 12:51Speaker 1: get into a trade. And then you look at the market. Gee,
- 12:53Speaker 1: you know, let's take it. We got Brexit going on here,
- 12:55Speaker 1: you know, and you've got this market crashing. Boy, this
- 12:57Speaker 1: must be really over sold. It's not really part of
- 12:59Speaker 1: my trade. But I'll take a flyer the pounds down
- 13:02Speaker 1: eighteen cents, you know, that's probably good for a balance.
- 13:05Speaker 1: I'll buy it. Those type of trade. So that's breaking discipline.
- 13:08Speaker 1: That's not part of your plan, that's not part of
- 13:10Speaker 1: your approach. Unless your plan is unless randomly file the
- 13:12Speaker 1: headline and the news and chase everything, well, those people
- 13:15Speaker 1: don't stay in business that well, or that this is
- 13:18Speaker 1: this is actually going. My my example wasn't just the
- 13:20Speaker 1: opposite sort of like you're gonna you're gonna try to
- 13:22Speaker 1: pick the bottom and you know you're gonna try to
- 13:24Speaker 1: catch the falling knife, so to speak. Um and and
- 13:27Speaker 1: some people could that could be, that could be in
- 13:29Speaker 1: a strategy in fact, catching a following knife. I've been
- 13:32Speaker 1: through traders who do trade like that. But you have
- 13:34Speaker 1: to have um. But then you know what you're getting out.
- 13:37Speaker 1: You know you you think it's gonna hold here and
- 13:39Speaker 1: if it doesn't, your out. So that's but just to
- 13:41Speaker 1: blindly take a trade that's not part of your your approach,
- 13:44Speaker 1: that's where that would be breaking discipline or more more important,
- 13:47Speaker 1: even more important is is not getting in and we
- 13:50Speaker 1: we and I know I'm sort of preaching to the
- 13:52Speaker 1: choir when I talk to you, but you know all
- 13:53Speaker 1: of this stuff, and this is I know you've got
- 13:55Speaker 1: the exact same view. Getting in is the least important part.
- 13:58Speaker 1: Getting out. That's what you gotta worry about. That's what
- 14:00Speaker 1: people don't worry about I used to jokingly sell there's
- 14:02Speaker 1: a million books on what to buy, but other than
- 14:05Speaker 1: justin mamos what to sell exactly. Hey, here's your exit
- 14:10Speaker 1: and that and that's when the discipline and that's where
- 14:13Speaker 1: the discipline comes in. Yeah, exactly. So let me back
- 14:16Speaker 1: up and talk a little bit about you, because people
- 14:18Speaker 1: may not be familiar with with your background. So how
- 14:22Speaker 1: did you find your way to finance? Oh? Purely accidentally,
- 14:26Speaker 1: I graduated, um, you know, from from an Ivy League
- 14:30Speaker 1: school for which to ground. I went to Brown with
- 14:33Speaker 1: a master's in economics, and I kind of expected sort
- 14:36Speaker 1: of day after graduation, i'd sort of stick my head
- 14:38Speaker 1: out and I'd have five offers, you know, and all that.
- 14:40Speaker 1: And I didn't know how to look for a job.
- 14:42Speaker 1: And my first maybe, I mean, I had the temporary point,
- 14:44Speaker 1: but the first real job is looking for So I
- 14:46Speaker 1: went to employment agencies and I get they probably haven't
- 14:50Speaker 1: chased since that they don't exist. Yeah all right, So
- 14:54Speaker 1: but they weren't very effective, and I like a two
- 14:56Speaker 1: weeks I think, you know, I didn't hair back anythings.
- 14:58Speaker 1: I got frustrated. So I just at the time New York,
- 15:01Speaker 1: the New York Times had a help not a help wanted,
- 15:04Speaker 1: but but position wanted a section and so for about
- 15:08Speaker 1: six job secret so like I think it costs me
- 15:12Speaker 1: like fourteen dollars or fifteen dollars. I put a two
- 15:16Speaker 1: line ad in and something along the line, uh, you know,
- 15:19Speaker 1: masters and an economics minor and math looking for an
- 15:22Speaker 1: analytical job pretty much. And I had about I don't
- 15:26Speaker 1: know the sixteen seventeen responses to that, uh all but one.
- 15:31Speaker 1: All but one were come ons. In other words, the
- 15:34Speaker 1: people they want you to say, they want you exactly
- 15:38Speaker 1: they want you to buy. It was like these chain
- 15:40Speaker 1: cell you know you they'll sell you, uh two thousand
- 15:42Speaker 1: dollars worth of soap bubbles and you go find double
- 15:44Speaker 1: people to sell at that type of thing. I went.
- 15:46Speaker 1: I went to one of these, uh thinking I was
- 15:49Speaker 1: going to a meeting of the company, and uh that
- 15:53Speaker 1: it was a manager. I said, well, I said, I
- 15:54Speaker 1: asked even the phone, this is not a sales we
- 15:56Speaker 1: have sales, but this is and I'm expecting to meet
- 15:59Speaker 1: this group of uh you know, at ah at the
- 16:01Speaker 1: quarterly meeting or whatever. And I walked in. It is
- 16:04Speaker 1: like this huge auditorium and it's like a display in
- 16:07Speaker 1: the front. And then and they have her on a
- 16:09Speaker 1: film with I think of Sebastian Cabital telling you, telling
- 16:12Speaker 1: how great this product. And then they have a guy
- 16:13Speaker 1: who has some sort of chemist who fell off a
- 16:16Speaker 1: roof supposedly, and while he was in the hospital to
- 16:18Speaker 1: think how he can make his life his wife's job easier,
- 16:21Speaker 1: and sort of came up with this miracle cleaning product
- 16:24Speaker 1: and anyway, and and then they have a guy come
- 16:26Speaker 1: out and tell you how he drives a portion uh
- 16:29Speaker 1: makes uh you know, how you can make ten dollars
- 16:31Speaker 1: spare time. Really literally, this was it. Uh. I went
- 16:34Speaker 1: to one of these obviously, and then any calls I
- 16:36Speaker 1: got there after. But there was one legitimate call, and
- 16:40Speaker 1: that legitimate call, as fate would have it, was a
- 16:43Speaker 1: research analyst position that was being vacated by Michael Marcus.
- 16:48Speaker 1: Michael Marcus who ultimately who was leaving to become a trader,
- 16:53Speaker 1: and um, he ultimately became an incredible trader. We can
- 16:57Speaker 1: talk more about him later if you want. But he
- 17:01Speaker 1: and I met as he was leaving and I was
- 17:03Speaker 1: going in and sort of he still was in New
- 17:05Speaker 1: York for a while and he would get together for lunches,
- 17:08Speaker 1: you know, because this uh well, this was a firm
- 17:11Speaker 1: called at the times called the Rentals Securities, which then
- 17:14Speaker 1: mergeds the Dean Withino Reynolds and went into you know,
- 17:17Speaker 1: multiple ultimately it became well yes or who, I don't
- 17:22Speaker 1: know where they ultimately ended up. I didn't stay. I
- 17:24Speaker 1: I stayed for two years, and you know I was
- 17:26Speaker 1: I started out like making two thousands less than my secretary. Um,
- 17:31Speaker 1: why shared with the research director. And I was doing
- 17:34Speaker 1: I and enough analyst, we're doing really almost all the work. Um.
- 17:38Speaker 1: And then after two years, I just stuck and I
- 17:40Speaker 1: was writing for for the Predecessor. Now it's called Modern Trading,
- 17:44Speaker 1: and then before that was called Futures, and before that
- 17:45Speaker 1: it was originally called Commodities Magazine. And that's why I
- 17:49Speaker 1: started writing. As I started writing, and you know, column
- 17:52Speaker 1: I came. So so two years I had a little
- 17:54Speaker 1: bit of a reputation. I went and stuck my head out,
- 17:56Speaker 1: you know, instantaneously got a job, uh you know as
- 18:00Speaker 1: research director. Triple my salary, triple that salary, and so
- 18:03Speaker 1: so I left it that so, I you know, I
- 18:05Speaker 1: didn't stay at Reynolds too long. I'm Barry Rihults. You're
- 18:08Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special
- 18:11Speaker 1: guest today is Jack Schweger. He is the author of
- 18:15Speaker 1: the famous Market Wizard series of books, as well as
- 18:19Speaker 1: being a trader and entrepreneur. UM, let's talk a little
- 18:23Speaker 1: bit about the role of luck and skill with traders.
- 18:27Speaker 1: And I want to ask, what is a deceptively simple question,
- 18:32Speaker 1: how difficult is trading as a profession, as a as
- 18:37Speaker 1: to a profession when you can actually earn a living,
- 18:40Speaker 1: extremely extremely difficult than I don't think most people are
- 18:43Speaker 1: cut out for it. In fact, I don't think I'm
- 18:45Speaker 1: cut out for it. I know I've never wanted to. Uh.
- 18:49Speaker 1: If I were really good, then I maybe would have
- 18:52Speaker 1: entertained the idea of being a full time trader. But
- 18:54Speaker 1: I never was good enough, you know. UH, Being good
- 18:57Speaker 1: enough to be net profitable in the markets as very
- 19:00Speaker 1: very different from being good enough to your living, coming
- 19:03Speaker 1: from that you're you know, you're you're you're paying for
- 19:05Speaker 1: your expenses. So I never had that particular confidence that
- 19:10Speaker 1: I was I was good enough. And the only reason
- 19:12Speaker 1: I'm even profitable as a trader, uh is just because
- 19:16Speaker 1: I've I've just spoken his own e people, and I've
- 19:18Speaker 1: had so much experience. I actually as my my natural instincts,
- 19:23Speaker 1: uh are pretty poorly attuned for trading. I think most people. Yeah,
- 19:27Speaker 1: well actually most people's are, and I'm no exception. And
- 19:29Speaker 1: in fact, some of the traits that are important for
- 19:32Speaker 1: good trading. Which something you asked before, what one? That
- 19:35Speaker 1: one that comes up all the time is patients. Um,
- 19:38Speaker 1: you know, somebody like Jim Rogers has a great line.
- 19:40Speaker 1: He says, I don't do anything until there's there's money
- 19:43Speaker 1: lying in a corner on the floor, and all I
- 19:45Speaker 1: have to do is to go and pick it up.
- 19:46Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, patients, just to wait for something that's
- 19:48Speaker 1: like a real setup, you know, a real fat pitch um.
- 19:51Speaker 1: And and similarly to stay with a position. You know
- 19:54Speaker 1: that the famous line from Reminiscences of a Stock Operator,
- 19:57Speaker 1: which I like the girl paraphrase, but I think it
- 20:00Speaker 1: was it might be the exact quote he said. It
- 20:03Speaker 1: was never uh. And for those listeners who don't know
- 20:06Speaker 1: the book, it's it's a book with the father's book
- 20:09Speaker 1: about Jesse Livermore. The Livermore is never identified. Everybody knows
- 20:13Speaker 1: it's Livermore and where the protagonist says. Uh. Talking about
- 20:17Speaker 1: what his success was due to, he says, it was
- 20:19Speaker 1: never my thinking that made the money. It was my sitting.
- 20:23Speaker 1: Got that my sitting. So he said, hey, I'm not
- 20:25Speaker 1: so smart. It's just I was able to stay and
- 20:27Speaker 1: stay and stay with a position I was working out.
- 20:30Speaker 1: So those that all speaks to patients. And it's a
- 20:33Speaker 1: trait that I my wife is listening to this recording
- 20:36Speaker 1: in the next room and actually probably would not ahead
- 20:38Speaker 1: when I say, you don't want to be with me
- 20:40Speaker 1: in the same car during a traffic jam. I am
- 20:42Speaker 1: not a patient person. That's that's that's interesting that there's
- 20:45Speaker 1: a wonderful book, you know, given all the wonderful books
- 20:49Speaker 1: on behavioral economics and and how people's cognitive issues are
- 20:56Speaker 1: are so very suspect. Frank Portnoy, who's probably best known
- 21:00Speaker 1: and for writing the book Infectious Greed, wrote a book
- 21:02Speaker 1: a few years ago called weight Um and it's a
- 21:06Speaker 1: fascinating look at the psychology behind that exact thing behind patients.
- 21:12Speaker 1: And it really is a trait that can be learned.
- 21:15Speaker 1: It's so important for for both traders and investors. Uh,
- 21:20Speaker 1: just look, you mentioned Brexit in the crazy market. You know,
- 21:23Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident that twenty years from now, when we
- 21:25Speaker 1: look back, this is gonna be a blip that we
- 21:28Speaker 1: will have forgotten, just like Abola was forgotten. Just like
- 21:33Speaker 1: you know, zekea I suspect is the next one that
- 21:36Speaker 1: makes huge headlines and then two years later it's like, oh,
- 21:39Speaker 1: whatever happened to you know, whatever happened to the chicken flu?
- 21:42Speaker 1: Wasn't that a big thing that was coming along? And
- 21:44Speaker 1: so anyway, um, let's so let's talk a little bit
- 21:47Speaker 1: about Look, how can somebody who's had a good run
- 21:52Speaker 1: of trades identify the difference between trades that are based
- 21:57Speaker 1: on skill and just getting lucky in there? Right? You
- 22:01Speaker 1: can never identify any particularly group of trades whether you're
- 22:03Speaker 1: just lucky your skill and it's always luck involved. But
- 22:07Speaker 1: luck is is the longer you go, the less luck
- 22:11Speaker 1: will win out. In other words, you can you can
- 22:13Speaker 1: have a streak, have a hot streak for a while,
- 22:15Speaker 1: and that could last for days, weeks, maybe even months,
- 22:18Speaker 1: but that's not gonna go on for you, right, So um,
- 22:21Speaker 1: eventually skill wins. Yeah. And and so if you're kind
- 22:24Speaker 1: of almost most years a year in, year out, you're
- 22:27Speaker 1: you're kind of that profitable. You never put your account
- 22:29Speaker 1: into real danger by allowing a deep draw down. And
- 22:34Speaker 1: so if if you're doing that, that's probably skilled then
- 22:37Speaker 1: because luck alone, unless unless I should make a provis
- 22:41Speaker 1: so you can have more bull markets go on for
- 22:44Speaker 1: multiple years. So if your approach is just to to
- 22:47Speaker 1: just go long, uh and stay long, and it's and
- 22:51Speaker 1: you're making you're doing well, and it's in a bull market,
- 22:53Speaker 1: all you can assume is you've been long during a
- 22:56Speaker 1: bull market. You have no idea what's gonna happen when
- 22:58Speaker 1: you have a bear market. So well, but there is
- 23:00Speaker 1: some skill to being on the right side. Well it's fine,
- 23:03Speaker 1: but if you've only been on one side in your trading.
- 23:06Speaker 1: You know, people saw trading, they saw trading. How many
- 23:08Speaker 1: people thought they were genius as they saw the trading
- 23:10Speaker 1: in the right so uh, and they you know, but
- 23:14Speaker 1: they continue trading through two thousand and two thousand and
- 23:16Speaker 1: one thinking it was gonna be the same thing. And
- 23:18Speaker 1: so yeah, they may have doubled their money, tripled their money,
- 23:21Speaker 1: but then draw down takes care of all of that.
- 23:24Speaker 1: That that's the famous Buffett quote is when the tide
- 23:27Speaker 1: goes out, we find out who's been swimming naked. And
- 23:30Speaker 1: so that that that no doubt about that. You go
- 23:33Speaker 1: through a full cycle, you find out if you actually yeah,
- 23:36Speaker 1: so that's that's only you can't tell if anybody is
- 23:38Speaker 1: good or not, uh without you know, out really seeing
- 23:42Speaker 1: them through through a bare phase. And actually just to
- 23:45Speaker 1: criticize myself here, um, there was one I have another
- 23:48Speaker 1: have A fourth market was a book called stock Market Wizards,
- 23:52Speaker 1: which I wrote right at the tail it was right
- 23:55Speaker 1: to turn you know, night late, so really at the
- 23:57Speaker 1: end of the bull market. Um. And and I was
- 24:01Speaker 1: specific to make the book different from the other market
- 24:03Speaker 1: was the books. I took the theme just stock marks.
- 24:05Speaker 1: I was interviewed only stock traders. So by by definition,
- 24:08Speaker 1: when I was doing the book, I was doing a
- 24:10Speaker 1: book of only stock traders right after a long long act.
- 24:12Speaker 1: Bullmarket was eighty two, right, we both know that. So
- 24:18Speaker 1: and but I tried. I thought I was taking people
- 24:20Speaker 1: who you know, also had the control, you know, who
- 24:23Speaker 1: would who would do okay uh in a bear market?
- 24:26Speaker 1: And oh would survive? But it turned out that yeah,
- 24:29Speaker 1: some of them did, but but quite a few didn't.
- 24:32Speaker 1: And so no, the book is out. The book is out,
- 24:37Speaker 1: and some of the guy you know, there are some
- 24:39Speaker 1: there are some famous people in there, like the Shaw
- 24:41Speaker 1: and and well controversial on Stevie Combe. But regardless of
- 24:45Speaker 1: what a yeah, regardless of you know, my my thing
- 24:49Speaker 1: about Steve coolee I I don't know anything more than
- 24:51Speaker 1: anybody else knows how to reading the press and all
- 24:53Speaker 1: of that. Uh. I know if that if there was
- 24:55Speaker 1: anything really obvious, they would have certainly have loved to
- 24:58Speaker 1: nail him, and they never did. Um. But if people
- 25:01Speaker 1: want to argue that he made so you know he
- 25:03Speaker 1: made inside of trades, I don't. I don't know. I
- 25:06Speaker 1: don't know the question with him, But was there a
- 25:08Speaker 1: lack of supervision over the pel Well that's that's that's question,
- 25:11Speaker 1: right right. But so but even if you wanted what
- 25:14Speaker 1: I'm saying is evening people want to say, hey, you
- 25:15Speaker 1: know these people work for him. He would have known
- 25:17Speaker 1: he was, but he there's a guy who does, like god,
- 25:22Speaker 1: thirty thousand trades a year, who knows why he's half
- 25:24Speaker 1: the volume and you look at his record. You could
- 25:28Speaker 1: cut his record in half and you still have one
- 25:30Speaker 1: of the best records of all time. So you know,
- 25:32Speaker 1: so what if you if af you trades it doesn't
- 25:34Speaker 1: make it. It doesn't from him. He is an incredible trader,
- 25:38Speaker 1: didn't no matter what anybody says. So let me ask
- 25:41Speaker 1: you one question that I've always found fascinating. And this
- 25:44Speaker 1: has to be right in your in your sweet spot
- 25:48Speaker 1: when you talk about skill and luck and psychology. We
- 25:53Speaker 1: all know traders who are like this. They take credit
- 25:56Speaker 1: for all the winning trades, but there's always an excuse.
- 25:59Speaker 1: They're always casting blame on any of the losses. Why
- 26:04Speaker 1: what's that about. That's well, actually the trader. If trader
- 26:07Speaker 1: does that, I'll take I'll give you better than even
- 26:09Speaker 1: I'll give you two to one odds. They're gonna they're
- 26:11Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna fail. They're gonna blow up, They're gonna
- 26:13Speaker 1: blow there. They're gonna fail anybody. And that's when I
- 26:16Speaker 1: talk about trades. I mean, any decent trader will admit
- 26:20Speaker 1: that it's his, you know, or hard fault, who pull
- 26:23Speaker 1: the trigger, whose fingers were right? And and and the
- 26:26Speaker 1: bad luck comes into it all the time. I can't
- 26:28Speaker 1: tell you how many times I get, oh, the other thing,
- 26:31Speaker 1: the one for the last week, I uh, it was
- 26:33Speaker 1: like a coco trade, and uh, I kind of picked
- 26:36Speaker 1: my and one of my one of my types of
- 26:37Speaker 1: trade is I'd like to buy markets um counter trend
- 26:42Speaker 1: uh at spots where I think that they'll they'll be
- 26:46Speaker 1: sold sold out, aboard out or whatever risk reward and
- 26:51Speaker 1: or you get a bounced dealing exactly. And so my
- 26:54Speaker 1: my er, my order rests there, and I have a
- 26:56Speaker 1: stop that dress there. So one morning, well you know,
- 26:59Speaker 1: I like up and I look at the trades, and boy,
- 27:01Speaker 1: I'm in and out of the coco trade um. And
- 27:04Speaker 1: this was the one day was like bizarre. It was like,
- 27:08Speaker 1: you know, the market that day, don't even know if
- 27:10Speaker 1: there was any news, but it traded like about twenty
- 27:12Speaker 1: times the range of normally trades. And I remember that
- 27:14Speaker 1: one day and its spiked down in one minute. I
- 27:16Speaker 1: don't even know if there was any news. It spiked
- 27:18Speaker 1: down a few under points in one minute. My so
- 27:20Speaker 1: here I get in, which would have been I think
- 27:22Speaker 1: a great entry. But then like and within one minute's time,
- 27:26Speaker 1: I think, you know, within seconds, it's like ticks down
- 27:29Speaker 1: sort of like three ticks. You know, I had two
- 27:31Speaker 1: stops when you know one is it like right almost
- 27:33Speaker 1: at a low one thing but like a second apart
- 27:35Speaker 1: or whatever. And then it goes right back up again.
- 27:37Speaker 1: So sure you could say that's bad luck. And maybe
- 27:40Speaker 1: you know that trade I think was bad luck. But
- 27:43Speaker 1: that does make a difference. The point is, over time, Uh,
- 27:45Speaker 1: it should make any difference, because I'll have good luck
- 27:47Speaker 1: to you know, just the bad ones. You really notice
- 27:50Speaker 1: the good ones, you figure the good ones. You're small
- 27:52Speaker 1: on on the bad ones of bad luck. Right, So
- 27:54Speaker 1: in the old days I would have blamed the specialist
- 27:56Speaker 1: for I don't know if we could do that. I'm
- 27:59Speaker 1: very hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
- 28:04Speaker 1: My special guest today is Jack Schweger. He is the
- 28:07Speaker 1: author of the Market Wizards series of books, as well
- 28:11Speaker 1: as a number of books on futures trading and technical training. Uh.
- 28:15Speaker 1: He's also has been a trader for for several decades.
- 28:20Speaker 1: You know, the last time you were visiting us, you
- 28:22Speaker 1: were just in the process of launching a company called
- 28:26Speaker 1: fund Seeder, and you're using some technology to try to
- 28:30Speaker 1: identify the new emerging traders that are coming up through
- 28:36Speaker 1: the ranks. Tell us a little bit about about how
- 28:39Speaker 1: this works. Sure, so the concept of fund Seeder is
- 28:42Speaker 1: globally now, not just the US or industrialized nations. There
- 28:46Speaker 1: are there are just who knows how many hundreds of
- 28:49Speaker 1: thousands of millions of traders. Now most of them are
- 28:52Speaker 1: not gonna be any good, but you don't need You
- 28:54Speaker 1: only need a tiny fraction of one percent that are good.
- 28:57Speaker 1: And that's a realistic expectation. But don't have it. They'll
- 29:00Speaker 1: never be discovered. They might be in countries where there's
- 29:02Speaker 1: no no real place for no institutional infrastructure exactly. Yeah,
- 29:07Speaker 1: you've got people. Let's say you got a mathematician in
- 29:09Speaker 1: East and Europe. Let's say right comes up with a
- 29:11Speaker 1: great algorithm and making money on markets. It doesn't have
- 29:13Speaker 1: much money to trade. Nobody will discover them, nobody will
- 29:16Speaker 1: speak to him. So you know, our idea was create
- 29:20Speaker 1: a central spot on the web where traders could go
- 29:23Speaker 1: get their track records verified on daily data and by verified,
- 29:28Speaker 1: verified by because the track records and the numbers come
- 29:31Speaker 1: not from the traders, but they come directly by linking
- 29:34Speaker 1: their account from their custodians. Yeah, it's from the broker.
- 29:37Speaker 1: So so we're getting downloads direct of course with the
- 29:39Speaker 1: traders or for rization, we're getting downloads of the daily results.
- 29:42Speaker 1: So so let me, let me stop you right there.
- 29:44Speaker 1: I know that when guys are launching hedge funds or
- 29:46Speaker 1: any sort of proprietary trading operation, the first question that
- 29:50Speaker 1: gets asked is show me your ordered returns. This really
- 29:55Speaker 1: is a way to say without spending tens of thousand
- 29:58Speaker 1: dollars on audits and with out going through the whole
- 30:02Speaker 1: process which could be thirty or fifty or a hundred
- 30:05Speaker 1: thousand dollars to tee up a fund, this at least
- 30:08Speaker 1: gives you a way to rank different traders on their
- 30:12Speaker 1: at least recent performance. Yeah, or actually as depending on
- 30:16Speaker 1: what broker, could be their entire performance. Uh. But it's
- 30:19Speaker 1: not mentor as replacement for a lot, but it is
- 30:21Speaker 1: meant as getting really numbers we believe are probably quite true.
- 30:25Speaker 1: It's an initial screens initial screening, right, So before this,
- 30:28Speaker 1: how would any of these people ever be found? They
- 30:32Speaker 1: were seen? They wouldn't. I mean they wouldn't. And that's
- 30:34Speaker 1: why I mean, I think, what is like something like
- 30:37Speaker 1: six or eighty um plus billion dollar funds controls sort
- 30:42Speaker 1: of of the I think the numbers like any it's
- 30:47Speaker 1: a very I mean, it's just super and it gets
- 30:52Speaker 1: more and more concentrated seams over the years. So we
- 30:54Speaker 1: live in a world where big money, all the instance,
- 30:57Speaker 1: tuial money goes to the same big traders, and everybody
- 31:00Speaker 1: else has sort of left out of it. Robert Frankl's
- 31:02Speaker 1: this the winner take All society, And uh, it's true
- 31:06Speaker 1: about movies. It's true about you know, there's a handful
- 31:09Speaker 1: of superstar musicians and then everybody and we're trying to
- 31:11Speaker 1: swim in the other direction. Our our though, it is
- 31:13Speaker 1: is a lot of talent out there that just has
- 31:15Speaker 1: no way of getting found. If we provide a venue
- 31:17Speaker 1: where they can be found discovered, then we can utilize
- 31:21Speaker 1: that database to uh even introduce them to invest So
- 31:25Speaker 1: that on one side is fun suitor technology. So this
- 31:28Speaker 1: is how you you're screening for these people? Well yeah,
- 31:30Speaker 1: and what what what fun see? The technology The main
- 31:32Speaker 1: technology there is it's a platform for traders traders. First
- 31:35Speaker 1: of all, it's the link you know, traders can get
- 31:36Speaker 1: their track records linked through the broker and getting verified
- 31:39Speaker 1: daily record. But then it does nice neat stuff which
- 31:43Speaker 1: like a trader would love to see a daily equity curve,
- 31:45Speaker 1: it's let be very difficult to get. I don't know
- 31:47Speaker 1: if any brokers that have daily equity curves, and and
- 31:50Speaker 1: I find what that is because I'm when I think
- 31:51Speaker 1: here curve, I'm thinking yield curve. No, No, so your
- 31:54Speaker 1: equity day by day, you know, you think simply he's
- 31:57Speaker 1: trying to start off a hundred thousand, you make five thousand,
- 31:59Speaker 1: got a hundred five, you lose seven, you got ninety eight?
- 32:01Speaker 1: That track record over time? What does it look like?
- 32:04Speaker 1: You know? So HOPEFU up the right right, but when
- 32:09Speaker 1: are you starting to deviate comm you know on pattern?
- 32:11Speaker 1: What what does it look like over time? What are
- 32:13Speaker 1: the what are the average or what are the We
- 32:15Speaker 1: have all sorts of analytics on that. So but just
- 32:17Speaker 1: to saw the basic equicur of just to be able
- 32:19Speaker 1: to see how your equity is fluctuating over time itself
- 32:23Speaker 1: is a really good important thing to have. So that
- 32:25Speaker 1: that's the find these obscure and unknown that's what they get. Well,
- 32:30Speaker 1: that's what they create, and then they can do all
- 32:31Speaker 1: sorts e finality, they can create underwater curves. Also the stats,
- 32:34Speaker 1: all sorts of studies like what happens like you could
- 32:37Speaker 1: apply moving averages, let the cross over moving average your
- 32:40Speaker 1: equity curve and say what would have happened if every
- 32:42Speaker 1: time there's a tenant forty moving average cross down, I
- 32:45Speaker 1: stopped trading and I didn't start until the cross stop
- 32:47Speaker 1: questions like that. So that that stuff is there and
- 32:50Speaker 1: it's free. So let's take the flips oute of this.
- 32:52Speaker 1: What is okay? So we can't do any investment on
- 32:57Speaker 1: that for compliance reason and all that. You know. So
- 33:00Speaker 1: we have a separate company called fund Seeder Investments, which
- 33:03Speaker 1: will use the database created on fund seater Technologies, which
- 33:07Speaker 1: is the fund seater dot com side is fund Seater Technologies,
- 33:10Speaker 1: and we'll find the you know, by ranking, by searching.
- 33:14Speaker 1: We got search fielders and all that will find the
- 33:16Speaker 1: best traders. Those traders we that we leave have potential.
- 33:20Speaker 1: We may have investors who are looking for certain types
- 33:22Speaker 1: of traders. We can play the introductory role or one
- 33:25Speaker 1: of one. One of our plans is hopefully by next
- 33:27Speaker 1: year we'll have an emerging manager fund and so we'll
- 33:30Speaker 1: take a bunch of these guys and gals and put
- 33:32Speaker 1: them into one fund and UH and also create a
- 33:35Speaker 1: fund and this is important. Our our plan right now
- 33:38Speaker 1: is to create a fund that also is much fairer
- 33:40Speaker 1: to investors because as you're being part of this is
- 33:43Speaker 1: this industry. No, it's you know, it's heads head's eye win,
- 33:48Speaker 1: tails you lose, you know, I mean it's like you can't.
- 33:53Speaker 1: The trader, no matter what happens, always has a free call.
- 33:55Speaker 1: I'm Barry rid Hilts. You're listening to Masters in Business
- 33:59Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is author and
- 34:03Speaker 1: trader Jack schweger Uh, author of the famous Market Wizards
- 34:08Speaker 1: series of books. So let's let's go back to those
- 34:12Speaker 1: three books or four books. And I wanted to ask
- 34:16Speaker 1: you mentioned the idea came to you because you really
- 34:19Speaker 1: just wanted to chat with some traders and maybe maybe
- 34:22Speaker 1: learn some stuff. Um. The response had to be really tremendous.
- 34:28Speaker 1: Were you surprised at how well received the books became? Yes? Yes,
- 34:33Speaker 1: And but it always sounds a little bit kind of
- 34:35Speaker 1: conceder what I did when I wrote the book I
- 34:38Speaker 1: mentioned like Reminiscences of a Stock Operator originally right, Um,
- 34:41Speaker 1: I did. I did have a goal of doing a
- 34:44Speaker 1: modern day version over my formats totally different, But I didn't.
- 34:49Speaker 1: The thing I had in mind is I was reading Reminiscences,
- 34:51Speaker 1: which I've always the best book on trading that I
- 34:54Speaker 1: ever you know read. Um, I was reading at sixty
- 34:57Speaker 1: five years after his publication day, and it was still
- 34:59Speaker 1: totally reliant even though the market today, Yeah that is
- 35:02Speaker 1: today is too right. So my goal was to do
- 35:05Speaker 1: a book that hopefully in sixty five years from then,
- 35:08Speaker 1: you know, people would still be reading because it's still
- 35:10Speaker 1: totally relevant. So that was my goal. Uh, the fact that, yeah,
- 35:13Speaker 1: you had to feel like as you were working your
- 35:15Speaker 1: way through it and and re editing it and rereading it,
- 35:19Speaker 1: you know, you you had to be hey, this stuff
- 35:21Speaker 1: is pretty I thought, well yeah, and and and to
- 35:23Speaker 1: that the editing part is interesting and you maybe appreciate it. Um.
- 35:26Speaker 1: You know, people sometimes think, hey, one comment I get
- 35:29Speaker 1: is for you know, you're you're a great interview you know,
- 35:31Speaker 1: you're a great interviewer. You know you really ask great questions.
- 35:34Speaker 1: You're really you know, and I say, no, I'm not
- 35:36Speaker 1: a great interviewer. When I'm what I am is I'm
- 35:38Speaker 1: a really great editor because I because I got like,
- 35:43Speaker 1: you know, I have like ten or twenty times and
- 35:44Speaker 1: material I actually used for the book. And not only that, Um,
- 35:49Speaker 1: you know a lot of times you have these guys,
- 35:50Speaker 1: you know, you get conversations people go off from tangents,
- 35:52Speaker 1: and it works well in this type of format, right,
- 35:56Speaker 1: It's okay, you don't notice it because that's the way
- 35:58Speaker 1: we speak. But in a written in a written format,
- 36:00Speaker 1: if you if I did verbatim of what everybody said,
- 36:04Speaker 1: it would sound deliterate, confusing, boring, you know. So my goal,
- 36:10Speaker 1: and a journalist, I guess the journalist goal is, would
- 36:12Speaker 1: be exactly word for word accurate. My goal was to
- 36:15Speaker 1: be as accurate to the truth that I could. So
- 36:18Speaker 1: if I if a trader was like going somewhere, it
- 36:20Speaker 1: didn't finish the point. I knew what he was going
- 36:23Speaker 1: to make the point, I would finish the point. But
- 36:25Speaker 1: of course the traders I get. Let the traders read
- 36:27Speaker 1: the end of product, and they always so they actually
- 36:29Speaker 1: reviewed and said, well, the words, well, they never even
- 36:32Speaker 1: knew I changed I mean anything, you know. They what
- 36:35Speaker 1: I was trying to do was get as close to
- 36:37Speaker 1: what they were trying to say in a most readable form,
- 36:40Speaker 1: throwing out the stuff that was didn't have anything to say.
- 36:43Speaker 1: And I was boring and and keeping the best parts
- 36:46Speaker 1: and and reshuffling it so it's flowed so you don't
- 36:50Speaker 1: discuss the same thing in eighteen different spots. And but
- 36:53Speaker 1: it was all It was a combination of trying to
- 36:55Speaker 1: be as true as possible to what they were communicating
- 36:58Speaker 1: while making it as readable as possib so trying to
- 37:01Speaker 1: really serve both purposes. And that was that was what
- 37:03Speaker 1: I was trying to do. And nobody ever thought that
- 37:05Speaker 1: I had changed. I don't think they ever realized that.
- 37:07Speaker 1: They probably thought it was verbat him because that's what
- 37:10Speaker 1: I was just pretty close to. It was what they
- 37:13Speaker 1: hoped for being a Yeah. So, so, over the course
- 37:16Speaker 1: of the fore Market Wizards books, did you notice anything
- 37:19Speaker 1: that had changed in the world and in the markets
- 37:23Speaker 1: or was it the focus just simply in a different
- 37:25Speaker 1: aspect of of in the world. The world marks to change.
- 37:29Speaker 1: For one thing, I had like people who had floor
- 37:31Speaker 1: trading experience, and some of the most colorful stories, and
- 37:34Speaker 1: in Market Wizards come you know, like Paul tr To
- 37:37Speaker 1: Jones with the trade that almost blew them out of business.
- 37:39Speaker 1: You know where we he puts on a trade way
- 37:41Speaker 1: too large, and and it's in a cotton pit, and
- 37:44Speaker 1: and that the broker who almost kills himself trying to
- 37:47Speaker 1: get to the the opposite side of the order. Has
- 37:50Speaker 1: they is they broken? For the merchant that owns all
- 37:53Speaker 1: of the Liberals supply, and Paul knows he's dead in
- 37:55Speaker 1: the water and he really almost completely wiped out in
- 37:57Speaker 1: a trade. But stories like that, those couldn't not more
- 38:00Speaker 1: because the floors don't exist anymore. So those things change.
- 38:03Speaker 1: But but the realities and what what makes trading successful
- 38:07Speaker 1: and not successful, those things happened. So last question before
- 38:11Speaker 1: we get into some of the specific trades that are
- 38:14Speaker 1: so fascinating. Um it has to be just tremendously gratifying
- 38:19Speaker 1: to see how successful the books have comes you do
- 38:22Speaker 1: you ever stop and say, I never in a million
- 38:24Speaker 1: years expected this that. Yeah, I guess I didn't think
- 38:27Speaker 1: that far. I like, I say, the fact that the
- 38:30Speaker 1: visual market was is now is going on, I don't
- 38:32Speaker 1: know twenty Uh, well it was past. It's well eight
- 38:38Speaker 1: and two years we will be eight now, something like
- 38:40Speaker 1: twenty eight years since I wrote it. So um, so
- 38:44Speaker 1: that is really was like the goal I was trying
- 38:46Speaker 1: to reach, and my surprise, I don't know, maybe I was.
- 38:50Speaker 1: Maybe I was didn't realize how difficult, how difficult that
- 38:52Speaker 1: should be, but it, uh, it was what I was
- 38:55Speaker 1: trying to achieve. So let's talk about a few specific
- 38:58Speaker 1: traders who I find to be uh fascinating. Um ed,
- 39:03Speaker 1: I want to pronounce his name Dakota. Dakota. So he
- 39:06Speaker 1: says he doesn't trust publish his track record, but he
- 39:09Speaker 1: was rumored to have started with five thousand dollars and
- 39:13Speaker 1: turned it into tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. So,
- 39:16Speaker 1: so here's the thing with Sakoda. Um And this is
- 39:18Speaker 1: the thing. I try to verify people as much as
- 39:20Speaker 1: I can in any ways you can, but sometimes you're
- 39:22Speaker 1: you're dealing with people that are just probably not managing
- 39:25Speaker 1: people's money that you're lucky to get them to interview. Now, Sakoda,
- 39:29Speaker 1: his name came up because I didn't know who he was.
- 39:32Speaker 1: I had interviewed Michael Marcus, who I knew personally mentioned
- 39:36Speaker 1: and just so people have context, Michael Mark, we're talking
- 39:38Speaker 1: about a guy that Commodity Scope, which used to be
- 39:41Speaker 1: a different type of firm, but they were like a
- 39:43Speaker 1: prop trading firm, future traders. Uh. They gave Michael thirty
- 39:47Speaker 1: thou dollar account and about a dozen years later that
- 39:50Speaker 1: that account was worth eighty million, and that was with
- 39:52Speaker 1: them taking out like a year for expenses. Uh. So
- 39:56Speaker 1: I just the normally that track. He had a string
- 39:59Speaker 1: of year Marcus. Yeah, Michael Mark said triple digit returns
- 40:02Speaker 1: for you know, he might have had a quadruple digit
- 40:05Speaker 1: I mean he had he had just astounding, He did astounding.
- 40:09Speaker 1: That was all all. This was all futures, and this
- 40:12Speaker 1: was in the seventies and early eighties and these markets
- 40:14Speaker 1: were just but he he knew how to He just
- 40:17Speaker 1: knew how to exploit that type of market and so
- 40:19Speaker 1: he built a fortune in that period. But when I
- 40:22Speaker 1: interviewed him, he said, you know, he should speak, and
- 40:25Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't want to do the interview because
- 40:27Speaker 1: he's a very very private person. He's never done another
- 40:29Speaker 1: interview as far as I know. Uh yeah, he nobody
- 40:33Speaker 1: would have known who he is. He's very shy, very quiet,
- 40:35Speaker 1: very photos Uh yeah, that doesn't give any talks, doesn't Yeah.
- 40:39Speaker 1: I don't think you'll find a photo of him. Uh
- 40:41Speaker 1: So that's Michael Marcus. And he agreed reluctantly and only
- 40:44Speaker 1: through the intervention of a mutual friend to do the interview,
- 40:47Speaker 1: and I flew out the Malibudha interview him, spent the day,
- 40:50Speaker 1: spent two days at his house, and the day we
- 40:52Speaker 1: did the full interviews all over the on the beach
- 40:54Speaker 1: and walking and sitting and whatever. You recording it, are
- 40:58Speaker 1: recording it? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you know every mean
- 41:00Speaker 1: I had two recorders. I didn't take any chances. And uh, anyway,
- 41:04Speaker 1: at the end of dinner, which cooked by his ship,
- 41:07Speaker 1: you know, his his in house chef, and and uh
- 41:10Speaker 1: he puts pull push us back the chair, and he says,
- 41:12Speaker 1: you know, you know this wasn't half bad. This was
- 41:15Speaker 1: kind of a cathodic experience. You know, I kind of
- 41:17Speaker 1: find the found that much of that strong praise from
- 41:20Speaker 1: not half bad. So he was the one who said,
- 41:25Speaker 1: then you too, you know you should didn't the view,
- 41:27Speaker 1: you shouldn't use Sakoda be courts. Dakota is the best
- 41:30Speaker 1: trader I know. Really, so this is a guy that turns.
- 41:32Speaker 1: Coming from a rock star, he turns so so I
- 41:36Speaker 1: know sa Coda is the real thing, because I know
- 41:38Speaker 1: this guy I worked to come out in his corps.
- 41:40Speaker 1: I know he's real. I know he did this amazing sting.
- 41:43Speaker 1: And and Michael Marcus not only that, he Michael Marcus
- 41:46Speaker 1: hired Covenor and was you know Covernor worked with you
- 41:50Speaker 1: know that was that was Marcus protege Covenan had his
- 41:53Speaker 1: own style. And and Caxton, you know, getting one of
- 41:57Speaker 1: the greatest traders of modern times. You know he can
- 42:00Speaker 1: that that and and so just to give you an idea,
- 42:03Speaker 1: so so Mark, So somebody like Marcus is telling you
- 42:05Speaker 1: about the best trading he knows. Um, you know, means
- 42:09Speaker 1: that's real, that's real. Yeah. And was it like with Sakoda?
- 42:12Speaker 1: How Sakoda is a very odd character, very very kind
- 42:16Speaker 1: of galactic. If you could use that as a colorful.
- 42:20Speaker 1: He'd like to free He had all he had a
- 42:22Speaker 1: phrase for everything, you know. So I noticed, like I
- 42:25Speaker 1: was there and I said, you know, hey, I noticed
- 42:27Speaker 1: you don't have a quote machine on your desk. And
- 42:30Speaker 1: he said, he said, having a coute machine in your
- 42:33Speaker 1: desk is like having a slot machine on your desk
- 42:35Speaker 1: and the feeding ofod quarters all day. So his idea
- 42:39Speaker 1: was he picks his trades. You know, he did a
- 42:40Speaker 1: sustematically he put it in, he doesn't want to watch it,
- 42:43Speaker 1: doesn't want to be he doesn't want to be enticed
- 42:44Speaker 1: by the market to do stuff that's outside of what
- 42:46Speaker 1: the approaches. So the noise uh in the background is
- 42:50Speaker 1: can be compelling and attractive and he basically, so I'm
- 42:54Speaker 1: gonna assume no TVs in his office? Well no, and
- 42:56Speaker 1: then this is back into this is what we did
- 42:58Speaker 1: this in the eighties he off to TVs and stuff,
- 43:00Speaker 1: but it was it wasn't as prevalent to have the
- 43:02Speaker 1: big screens and all that. How about Marty Schwartz, Schwartz was, Yeah,
- 43:06Speaker 1: he was very intense. Schwartz is a very intense guy. Schwartz,
- 43:09Speaker 1: by the way, also had this when I and people,
- 43:12Speaker 1: these people can't keep up records like this, but Schwartz, Uh,
- 43:15Speaker 1: like a ten year record, which he had ordered. This
- 43:18Speaker 1: is one of the times he was very proudly showing
- 43:21Speaker 1: me his numbers because I know it. I want you. Yeah, okay,
- 43:24Speaker 1: it is nobody's gonna believe this. It's twenty five percent
- 43:27Speaker 1: a year, a month, a month for ten years, for
- 43:36Speaker 1: ten ten years. Uh stock only stock index futures, stocking.
- 43:41Speaker 1: He just traded stock index futures and and he had
- 43:45Speaker 1: only he only had I think two or three losing
- 43:48Speaker 1: months in the entire period. And I think his worse
- 43:50Speaker 1: than losing Hi ups like a three percent loss. And
- 43:52Speaker 1: he went out and it was two and he went
- 43:53Speaker 1: out of his way to tell me that those were
- 43:55Speaker 1: the months his kids were born, so he had distractions.
- 43:59Speaker 1: That's fair enough that those are some astonishing numbers and
- 44:02Speaker 1: and let's do uh Stanley Drucon Miller. Yeah, so you know,
- 44:06Speaker 1: Stanley Druccon Miller again one of the incredible traders of
- 44:09Speaker 1: all time. I think people don't know how great he
- 44:12Speaker 1: he was. I mean, first of all, he ran his
- 44:13Speaker 1: own Docane fund for close to forty years and probably
- 44:17Speaker 1: average around compounded trading billions of dollars. Uh uh. People
- 44:22Speaker 1: also a lot unless they read my book, would not
- 44:24Speaker 1: necessarily know that druck and Miller ran the Sources Quantum
- 44:27Speaker 1: Fund for a long period the when Source was in
- 44:30Speaker 1: Eastern Europe kind of doing of his stuff that he
- 44:32Speaker 1: was interested in doing, and so uh, really an extraordinary trader.
- 44:37Speaker 1: So if people want to find out more information about
- 44:40Speaker 1: either yourself for a fund seat or a market, wizards
- 44:42Speaker 1: with the best fund seater dot com. You know, just
- 44:46Speaker 1: a fun seater is like one word and what it
- 44:48Speaker 1: sounds like. And I have my own side which I
- 44:50Speaker 1: didn't do anything with. But you know, if you want
- 44:51Speaker 1: to get the books or any other links to any stuff.
- 44:54Speaker 1: Jack Schwegger dot com Jeff, thank you so much for
- 44:56Speaker 1: being say your time. We've in speaking with Jack Schwager,
- 45:01Speaker 1: author of Market Wizards. If you enjoy this conversation, be
- 45:05Speaker 1: sure and stick around for the podcast extras, where we
- 45:07Speaker 1: keep the tape rolling and continue chatting. Be sure to
- 45:10Speaker 1: check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com or
- 45:14Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts. I'm Barry Rit Halts.
- 45:19Speaker 1: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio, brought
- 45:23Speaker 1: to you by B A s F. We Create Chemistry.
- 45:27Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Jack, Thank
- 45:30Speaker 1: you so much for doing this. You're you're one of
- 45:32Speaker 1: our few repeat guests. And I know I've said this before,
- 45:37Speaker 1: but I really have to reiterate. This show came about
- 45:45Speaker 1: because of because of Market Wizards. It came about because
- 45:49Speaker 1: I said, that looks like so much fun. When I
- 45:51Speaker 1: first started writing for Bloomberg, they said, hey, we have
- 45:54Speaker 1: these great facilities, it's a playground. What would you like
- 45:57Speaker 1: to do? And my answer was I want to find intelligent,
- 46:01Speaker 1: accomplished people, both from in investing and outside and sit
- 46:06Speaker 1: them down and have a Market Wizards like conversation. And
- 46:09Speaker 1: they were, okay, go do that that's really how this
- 46:13Speaker 1: came about. So the last time we spoke, I would
- 46:16Speaker 1: be I would be remiss if I did not point
- 46:18Speaker 1: this out. You reminded me of something fairly hilarious that
- 46:23Speaker 1: I had forgotten about, which was Amazon review of Market
- 46:28Speaker 1: Wizards from two thousand and three. So I actually went
- 46:32Speaker 1: out and pulled that review today and I just have
- 46:37Speaker 1: to share this with the audience because it's so funny.
- 46:40Speaker 1: Um the market strategist for New York City Investment Bank
- 46:42Speaker 1: bl blah blah blah. So when gave me this book
- 46:45Speaker 1: when I first got into the industry a decade ago.
- 46:48Speaker 1: So this is written in oh three, God, we are
- 46:51Speaker 1: getting old. I find myself rereading it every five years. Quote.
- 46:55Speaker 1: I highly recommended to anyone who was involved in the markets,
- 46:59Speaker 1: say we stated, this is the book for anyone who
- 47:03Speaker 1: wants to learn about trading or investing. It is simply
- 47:06Speaker 1: a must read. What's so utterly compelling about the interviews
- 47:10Speaker 1: is how consistent the themes are that arise from so
- 47:13Speaker 1: many different traders. This is true regardless of the markets
- 47:17Speaker 1: they work in, commodities, equities, currencies, bonds, or the style
- 47:21Speaker 1: they employ technical macro economic, fundamental quantitative the basic concepts
- 47:27Speaker 1: revealed by the Wizards or these discipline, capital, preservation, risk management,
- 47:34Speaker 1: individual responsibility, flexibility, intellectual honesty, and consistency. Now that's pretty fascinating.
- 47:42Speaker 1: And and that is a in the mouth the words
- 47:45Speaker 1: you use. You couldn't capture the book better. I mean
- 47:48Speaker 1: that really is what the what the book had said
- 47:51Speaker 1: to me. And I completely forgot about that. And that
- 47:55Speaker 1: is that. Yeah. But the thing is your review. You
- 47:58Speaker 1: know how Amazon has, uh, if you like a review,
- 48:00Speaker 1: you know it was helpful. Yeah, And so that review,
- 48:03Speaker 1: like I I don't know what it was like in
- 48:05Speaker 1: you know, ninety eight out of nine and nine people
- 48:06Speaker 1: found it helpful or something like it shows up as
- 48:09Speaker 1: the top reviewed review. And I completely so it's the
- 48:13Speaker 1: top ranked review of market Wizards. If you go to
- 48:16Speaker 1: the people, it will be always be the first one.
- 48:18Speaker 1: And nobody's ever going to replace that. Because so you
- 48:20Speaker 1: reminded me of that, and I hadn't a I had
- 48:23Speaker 1: no idea that was of all the little of all
- 48:26Speaker 1: the little ego things to go out and google yourself
- 48:30Speaker 1: or whatever. I just and by the way, I almost
- 48:34Speaker 1: never never write reviews of stuff. Usually it's because something
- 48:39Speaker 1: is this is not how it's advertised. This was advertised
- 48:43Speaker 1: as a twelve pack and only one showed up or
- 48:46Speaker 1: whatever it was. And and I was moved enough by
- 48:51Speaker 1: the book to write that review, and then I never
- 48:54Speaker 1: thought a second And I'm sure it was very helpful.
- 48:56Speaker 1: I mean that because when people go to that and
- 48:58Speaker 1: then the first thing I see is your you. It's
- 49:00Speaker 1: it's it's sincere. It's honest, it's sincere. So so let's
- 49:03Speaker 1: talk a little bit about about some of the other wizards,
- 49:07Speaker 1: because I think people are are genuinely interested. During the
- 49:11Speaker 1: broadcast portion, we didn't get to Richard Dennis. Uh. Tell
- 49:16Speaker 1: us a little bit about Richard Dennis. All right, Richard
- 49:19Speaker 1: Dennis h started out as a floor trader. Uh. He
- 49:22Speaker 1: started on the Mid America Exchange. Of course, we don't
- 49:25Speaker 1: have any floors altogether, but the midor Erica for people
- 49:28Speaker 1: who were unless their old time is like us. Uh.
- 49:31Speaker 1: Mid America's change was exchange for people small conquered mini contracts,
- 49:35Speaker 1: so people who couldn't afford the trade to regular grain contracts,
- 49:37Speaker 1: which weren't that big really, they would trade the Mid American.
- 49:40Speaker 1: That's what he started out. And he started out literally,
- 49:42Speaker 1: I think we're about the two hundred dollars and uh
- 49:44Speaker 1: uh you know, eventually got it up a few thousand.
- 49:46Speaker 1: But he that that that the little steak got multiplied
- 49:51Speaker 1: ultimately a couple hundred million dollars a couple hundred yeah,
- 49:55Speaker 1: two hundred million plus whatever I mean to two hundred
- 49:59Speaker 1: ye yeah, yeah yeah, Uh. It could be the greatest
- 50:03Speaker 1: compounded return of Yeah, there's uh, there's quite a few.
- 50:06Speaker 1: I mean that would certainly if you want of them,
- 50:08Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Uh. And and now Dennis ultimately went
- 50:13Speaker 1: on to manage money that didn't work out so well. Uh,
- 50:16Speaker 1: he did much better for his own money, and he
- 50:18Speaker 1: he started he started blew up, you know, back he
- 50:21Speaker 1: got stuck in the big thing that that hurt Dennis
- 50:24Speaker 1: was And that was also a bit of bad luck,
- 50:26Speaker 1: I would say, uh was the eighties seven crash. Uh.
- 50:30Speaker 1: And everybody thinks that the eighty seven crash. Of course,
- 50:32Speaker 1: it was like the the immense decline to stock market.
- 50:35Speaker 1: But what also happened in eight seven crash was this
- 50:37Speaker 1: amazing rally in in the interest rate markets and your
- 50:42Speaker 1: dollars which nowadays you think of your dollars, we'll trade
- 50:45Speaker 1: a cup, you know, they go five or ten points
- 50:47Speaker 1: right there, there was an overnight move of two hundred
- 50:51Speaker 1: and fifty points. I mean, think about that. That's like
- 50:53Speaker 1: in that that's per contract, you know. So uh it
- 50:58Speaker 1: was like a seven thousand dollar move roughly. I think
- 51:00Speaker 1: it was per contract, and we're talking a guy who's trading,
- 51:03Speaker 1: you know, thousands of contracts. Uh so, but that and
- 51:06Speaker 1: he couldn't do anything. It was like, oh, it was instantaneous.
- 51:08Speaker 1: It's just like it was the gap. You couldn't do anything.
- 51:13Speaker 1: So that that trade I think pretty much wipe. You
- 51:15Speaker 1: know that. That that killed his first advent or one
- 51:17Speaker 1: of it would adventures and so but he never again
- 51:21Speaker 1: reached that. Uh but what was he especially famous for?
- 51:24Speaker 1: He was a trend follower, and part of it I
- 51:27Speaker 1: think maybe was like he when he operated when the
- 51:30Speaker 1: markets were conducive to that. Now, trend following, we can
- 51:34Speaker 1: get into this if you want. I mean, there's a
- 51:35Speaker 1: reason why trend following works to some extent all the time.
- 51:40Speaker 1: Over time, there are elements of momentum and persistency that
- 51:44Speaker 1: exists in all markets because people's mood tend to not
- 51:48Speaker 1: flip flop from day to day. If there's an expansionary period.
- 51:51Speaker 1: It has a tendency that that's one. It's more it's
- 51:54Speaker 1: more that it's more fundamental than that is because the
- 51:56Speaker 1: things that really drive the big moves are things that blasts.
- 52:00Speaker 1: So it's it's a central bank decides to secular. So yeah,
- 52:04Speaker 1: they decide, well, we're gonna weekend the dollar or strengthen
- 52:06Speaker 1: the euro, whatever they're gonna do. Uh And they're not
- 52:09Speaker 1: gonna just do it for two days or two weeks
- 52:11Speaker 1: and these day or or there's a move to say, okay,
- 52:14Speaker 1: we're gonna start lowering interest rates, and usually when that
- 52:17Speaker 1: happens or raised interests, once that trend begins, it usually
- 52:20Speaker 1: goes on. So trends have a way of persisting. And
- 52:22Speaker 1: even if it's something like commodities or whatever, if there's
- 52:26Speaker 1: a shortage of metals, it takes kiars to open new
- 52:28Speaker 1: minds and stuff. So these trends can go on for
- 52:30Speaker 1: a while. Uh. So that's why it works, But it's
- 52:33Speaker 1: gotten much more difficult to exploit because the markets there's
- 52:36Speaker 1: so many people who try to do this. When we
- 52:38Speaker 1: were starting this early on or why should say we
- 52:41Speaker 1: but the trade aside, somebody Dresy interviewed you know, they
- 52:43Speaker 1: were the early ones doing this stuff, and they were
- 52:45Speaker 1: doing trend following techniques, and but now there's so many
- 52:48Speaker 1: people doing it that you've got a lot of a
- 52:50Speaker 1: lot of false breakouts, and it's much more difficult to
- 52:52Speaker 1: make money that way. That's that's fascinating. So not only
- 52:56Speaker 1: was he a big trend follower, but there's a famous
- 52:59Speaker 1: total story with him with the turtles. Well yeah, I mean,
- 53:02Speaker 1: well there's a group of traders called the Turtles, uh,
- 53:05Speaker 1: which where the name comes from the story is that
- 53:08Speaker 1: he was in Singapore and he went he saw a
- 53:11Speaker 1: farm where they were raising turtles as Vada turtles. By
- 53:14Speaker 1: the tens of that. His thought was, Gee, wouldn't be
- 53:17Speaker 1: being interesting if we could if I could trace traders
- 53:20Speaker 1: like their raising turtles. Here you trying to do with
- 53:22Speaker 1: which is why we're trying front seat or except we're
- 53:24Speaker 1: not trying to train them or anything. We're yeah, and
- 53:27Speaker 1: and and Dennis and another trader we talked about an intermission.
- 53:31Speaker 1: Neck Cart who was his partner, trained a group of
- 53:34Speaker 1: traders called the Turtles, and some of them went on
- 53:36Speaker 1: to do quite well. Uh. And so that's kind of
- 53:39Speaker 1: a famous story. And they put an Times and yeah,
- 53:44Speaker 1: or not think we actually was the Wall Street Journal, right,
- 53:46Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. They did two years, uh, and
- 53:48Speaker 1: they picked about twenty people each time, and they had
- 53:51Speaker 1: no previous way. They were not looking for training. They
- 53:53Speaker 1: were looking for people like game inventors, they were looking
- 53:56Speaker 1: for chess players, they were looking they were looking at
- 53:58Speaker 1: people who kind of had create to an analytical and thing.
- 54:01Speaker 1: But they didn't want people who actually know anything about
- 54:03Speaker 1: market any want they want. They don't want to be
- 54:06Speaker 1: sullied by the wrong approach. You know. So Renaissance Technology
- 54:09Speaker 1: out out in Umsa talking near Stony Brook, Jim Simon's
- 54:14Speaker 1: he doesn't hire Wall Street people, you know, well that
- 54:16Speaker 1: but that's a that's a pure that's how that's a
- 54:19Speaker 1: really pure deep quantitative really you know, really deep quantitative stuff.
- 54:24Speaker 1: So people like Simon's yeah, and and and Shore is similar,
- 54:27Speaker 1: you know, uh, they basically very highly quantitative approaches. So
- 54:33Speaker 1: so those are some of the uh, those are some
- 54:37Speaker 1: of the people you mentioned. Druck and Mill. We talked
- 54:38Speaker 1: about Marty Schwartz and any Trader in particular. You think, uh,
- 54:43Speaker 1: we're worth mentioning that. Yeah, the one trader we didn't
- 54:46Speaker 1: talk about who I I just think is a phenomenal,
- 54:49Speaker 1: phenomenal individual is and and probably in in some ways,
- 54:53Speaker 1: of all the great people that I interviewed, is probably
- 54:55Speaker 1: the most amazing. And that would be that would be
- 54:58Speaker 1: Ed Thorpe. Sure be Eat the Dealer, his first book,
- 55:01Speaker 1: and then beat the market, Beat the markets. Right, he
- 55:04Speaker 1: was out in Stanford or yeah, yeah, he's out in
- 55:07Speaker 1: California around. He's still around. He's now when I interviewed him,
- 55:11Speaker 1: he think he was like interviewed two thousand and twelve.
- 55:14Speaker 1: I think he was seventy eight or so or seventy nine,
- 55:18Speaker 1: so he's low low eighties. Now this is you know,
- 55:21Speaker 1: he's a just he's a mathematician, PhD mathematician. He actually
- 55:26Speaker 1: the way he became a PhD athetician, which tells you
- 55:29Speaker 1: a lot about the man, is he was doing his PhD.
- 55:31Speaker 1: And this is a kid who grew up in the
- 55:33Speaker 1: Depression um in a poor school district, very bad education
- 55:37Speaker 1: toward himself physics at at a young age, got you know,
- 55:41Speaker 1: got accepted into uh, you know, top universities in California,
- 55:45Speaker 1: and was getting his PhD, was working on his thesis
- 55:47Speaker 1: and PhD in physics. Decided he didn't he decided he
- 55:50Speaker 1: didn't have enough math knowledge, started the order thing courses
- 55:54Speaker 1: in the graduate math courses, ended up with the PhD.
- 55:56Speaker 1: Math never rots thesis, so he you know, in in physics,
- 56:00Speaker 1: technically speaking, he's not a PhD in physics. They never
- 56:02Speaker 1: bore writing the but some some stuff he did. He
- 56:05Speaker 1: actually and he has this amazing track record. Uh his
- 56:08Speaker 1: first fund nineteen years, um, nineteen years, he only had
- 56:13Speaker 1: uh like two or three losing months in all those
- 56:16Speaker 1: nineteen years one percent losses. The largest loss ninete cent compounded.
- 56:21Speaker 1: But that's the that's that's that's a track record. He
- 56:24Speaker 1: also did stuff like the reason he did so well.
- 56:27Speaker 1: He he came up with the Black a mathematical equivalent
- 56:31Speaker 1: formulation of the Black Shows model about five years before then,
- 56:35Speaker 1: famous paper that want the nob prize. And he didn't
- 56:38Speaker 1: publish it because why I asked him, why he was
- 56:40Speaker 1: too busy. Yeah, think of it for five years. He's
- 56:43Speaker 1: he may be the world the only person in world
- 56:45Speaker 1: who knows how the price options correctly at and and
- 56:48Speaker 1: and that's what he made it. And he he was.
- 56:52Speaker 1: He had the first the first war you know type
- 56:55Speaker 1: option fund. He had the first convertible bond fund. He
- 56:57Speaker 1: had the first statop fund. He came up with all
- 57:00Speaker 1: of these things on his own. He and when he
- 57:02Speaker 1: was before his trading career, then he was doing stuff
- 57:04Speaker 1: like UH. He was the first person to h with
- 57:07Speaker 1: with UH. With an MT Professor Shannon, who was the
- 57:11Speaker 1: father farther information theory, they did the first miniature computer.
- 57:14Speaker 1: This is back in the sixties when god, you know,
- 57:17Speaker 1: we had we had IBM IBM mainframes as large as
- 57:20Speaker 1: the room to do simple calculations. They created their own
- 57:23Speaker 1: own mini ministure computer and did the studies to use
- 57:27Speaker 1: Newtonian physics to beat Roulette wheel, just to show that
- 57:30Speaker 1: it could be done. And they got like a forty
- 57:32Speaker 1: four percent edge on the Roulette um. And and so
- 57:35Speaker 1: he did all these amazing things. That's fascinating. Why do
- 57:38Speaker 1: you say he's the most interesting character. Well, because he
- 57:41Speaker 1: has all that those elements. You know, he figured out
- 57:43Speaker 1: how to beat you know, the casinos at their own game.
- 57:46Speaker 1: They changed. In fact, they had meetings about what to
- 57:49Speaker 1: do about Thorpe, you know about this man, professor. Yeah,
- 57:51Speaker 1: and and there's a story and they were they thinking
- 57:54Speaker 1: about banning him from the worst band. Let's put it
- 57:57Speaker 1: this way. One of those stories in hedge fund markt
- 57:58Speaker 1: Wizards tell us about and this is like out of
- 58:01Speaker 1: a movie with his brakes not working, you know, going
- 58:05Speaker 1: downhead car on the car and just throwing the corn
- 58:08Speaker 1: reverse and and finding out that the car has been
- 58:11Speaker 1: you know, tampered with, you know really Yeah, yeah, so
- 58:14Speaker 1: we had the vegas. We had so But anyway, So
- 58:18Speaker 1: had that side of his life and then he did
- 58:19Speaker 1: all these He was the creator of so many catch
- 58:22Speaker 1: fund strategy He's the first guy to do it. Um
- 58:25Speaker 1: and uh uh and there all sorts. The thing that
- 58:28Speaker 1: I can't even think he was a made off. He
- 58:30Speaker 1: he kind of he he knew made off. He figured
- 58:33Speaker 1: out what made off was up to like a dozen
- 58:36Speaker 1: years before. Uh. And he had he investors because investor,
- 58:40Speaker 1: one of his investors said hey, what do you think
- 58:41Speaker 1: of this? He said, give me the trades. And he
- 58:43Speaker 1: he's a mathematician. He he gave mateen reasons why it
- 58:48Speaker 1: was why he was out. That's fascinating. It's a shame
- 58:52Speaker 1: he didn't go public with that. Yeah, I think he
- 58:54Speaker 1: I think I think I might have discussed that in
- 58:57Speaker 1: the book. And there were reasons why. You know, he
- 58:58Speaker 1: just felt that you know he couldn't get and of
- 59:01Speaker 1: course that you know, Actually, uh, I should know the
- 59:05Speaker 1: name the fellow went public um uh mark uh Greek
- 59:09Speaker 1: name uh Marcot pop Harry, Marco, Marco Polos, Marco Polos, right, Uh,
- 59:15Speaker 1: I mean he wrote this great paper which beautifully beautiful analysis,
- 59:21Speaker 1: and they ignored it. I thought from Marco Polos's paper
- 59:25Speaker 1: the most compelling thing was if he's doing this by
- 59:28Speaker 1: right strategy, there aren't enough options in the world that
- 59:32Speaker 1: this isn't complicated. He's got to be like he's doing
- 59:36Speaker 1: trades and markets that had no volume on that day,
- 59:38Speaker 1: and he's doing what he's doing tens of thousillions of
- 59:40Speaker 1: dollars right, and tens of thousands of trades and a
- 59:43Speaker 1: market that didn't even have any option trades. It's it's hindsight.
- 59:46Speaker 1: Bias is always present. But that was foresight of market
- 59:50Speaker 1: Polosis party he was. It was foresight that that's quite
- 59:54Speaker 1: that's quite fascinating. So let's talk a little bit about
- 59:57Speaker 1: technical Since you've written a book about trend following and
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: market trading in futures, I shouldn't really call it trend following. Yeah,
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: it's not yet. It's really more technically answered. The book
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: that got me into this whole thing writing was was
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: was an analygical book called Complete Guide to the Futures Market,
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: which was the catalyst for the Market Wizard books. Because
- 1:00:18Speaker 1: that book, I told you had the idea of years before.
- 1:00:21Speaker 1: That book did well for an analytical book. I had
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: some publishers say, hey, why don't you do want you
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: to do a whole bunch of analygal books. I said, no,
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: thank you, I've done that once. It was a lot
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: of work, and so I did the Market Wizards. But
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: that book is now getting redone. I have a co
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: Aufered Markets going and doing a great job, doing great
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: legwork getting it updated. And UH so that the updated
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: version the new the new version of the Complete Guide
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: of the Market. Uh, Complete Guide to the Futures of markets,
- 1:00:45Speaker 1: like guid the Future market is fundamentals, technical options, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Trading.
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: Uh that comes out this fall sometimes that's that's interesting.
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: So so how did you find your way to technicals?
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: What made you like? Ah? Yeah, so I said, you're
- 1:00:59Speaker 1: looking at somebody who started out as a fundamental analysts.
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: I hear this on a regular basis, starts out as
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: a c f A or or a macro economist. And
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: then because I come, you know, I come from an
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: account what's my education, I'm I'm I've got a degree
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: in economic so so, uh, you know you're to be
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: inclined to look for a statistical analysts, you know, that
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: type of analysis approach. Um. But I found that the
- 1:01:25Speaker 1: fundamental analysis was very poorly attuned to trading, because fundamentals
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: don't give you timing, uh, And it's worse than Actually,
- 1:01:33Speaker 1: I say, the only way that fundamentals are useful for
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: timing is in a contrarian way. So in other words,
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: if you have something that's supposed to be bullish for
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: the market and it doesn't cause the market to go
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: up much or as much as you think, or cause
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: the market goes down, that might be very useful bearish information,
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: but used as the way it's intended, fundamentals do not
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: work for timing because they're just too broad, much too broad.
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: Ralph Acampora, I think had the greatest explanation on the
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: tension between fundamentals and technicals. I actually have a quote
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: of his Fundamentals tell you what to buy, technicals tell
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: you when. Yeah, that's a good way to do it
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: and you could use fundamentals of that you can't say
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: you can say well yeah, and if you're a good
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: fundamental analyst, you can get say well this market should
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: go up over time. I wanted to look for only
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: by trade. That's that's a that's a good use of fundamentals.
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: And the way I got into technicals because I was
- 1:02:26Speaker 1: a research director and uh, one of my analysts was
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: a technical anals. So I didn't do anything, but I
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: noticed that of all the analysts, he was the only
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: one who was doing well, right, And so I didn't
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: want I like to think I was a little bit
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: open minded. So I said, Steve, you tell me what
- 1:02:42Speaker 1: you do and he started, you know and Steve who
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: which okay, So I showed that absolutely Steve Kronowits And
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: unfortunately Steve Proms was I know, he was a very
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: close friend and he unfortunately died just a couple of
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: months ago. So I was, you know, probably the big
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: the worst loss I had as a friend in my life. Yeah, yeah,
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: just like he was a great person. Um, but Steve
- 1:03:03Speaker 1: was the one who talked me techno analysis. When when
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: you said tell me what you do, how does he
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: So he said you know, well, he made me understand
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: why these things work. You know, so I came in
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: with the well, this is the pocket of stuff work,
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: and they appreciate that it works because it reflects everything
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: going to market. It's reflecting the psychology of what you're seeing.
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: You're seeing fundamentals in the charts. It's just you're seeing
- 1:03:24Speaker 1: him through the price action. And that's what the people
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: don't understand that. People say, oh, it's a bunch of
- 1:03:29Speaker 1: mambo jumbo and all that. Well, no, because anything that's fundamental,
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: people who were moving the markets for fundamentals, you they
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: can't hide what they're doing. It shows up in the supply,
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: it shows up in the price. So so that leads
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: to a question I had written down to ask you,
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: what do you think people misunderstand about technicals? That that
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: that's that's the key thing, that that the technicals aren't
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: some mysterious thing. They are the reflection of all the
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: participants in the market. So they do reflect fundamentals. Another thing,
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: and this is one of the main one of the
- 1:03:58Speaker 1: main things, like my complete guard the futures market, one
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: of my main points is you don't when you and
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: I go through lots of charged analysis, techno analysis all
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: that I say, it's not so much interpreting when these
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: patterns and it's a lot of subjectivity. What's even more
- 1:04:13Speaker 1: important is when things that should work one way based
- 1:04:16Speaker 1: upon the techno analysis don't work. So what I call
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: a sort of a failed signal is more important than
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: than a classical signal tells you something is happened. So
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: if you get a you get a market. Hey, this
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: is actually my favorite example is this is really terrible
- 1:04:32Speaker 1: news and and the stock actually rallied on. That's right,
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: that's that's the type of thing. And but I'll give
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: you like one example that the personally, Uh, it was
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: a week or two ago. It was along the bonds
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: of the market was going up, and then one morning
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: gaps into highs. I'm I'm doing great, right, and it's
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: sort of and then during the day just goes down
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: and starts going down and down and down and down,
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: and I say, hey, that is just not the right
- 1:04:56Speaker 1: type of action. And I had stops in so if
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: it got close to unchanged, I'd be out. I got out.
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: And yeah, now with Brexit is going back up again,
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: but it had a good size reaction, and that's that's
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: a good example of you had a gap breakout, it
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: should have been strong, and it failed. It came back
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: into you know, so that's again so to me, that's
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: a that's a much better signal than the breakout. So
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: today we're sitting in this room with one to three, four,
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: five like ten monitors and you know, five computers hooked
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: up to a network of industrial military grade computing technology.
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: What has all of this computing horsepower and and all
- 1:05:37Speaker 1: of this charting software done to the world of technicals?
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: And I say that with with the admission that I
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: came up with guys who would do charts by hands
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: every night. And and the traders there, traders who are
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: interviewed who still in system. You know, it's a little
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: insistem to or met you know, that was a little
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: system doing it by hand. Uh. And as far as
- 1:05:58Speaker 1: I go for exam call, I don't use any of
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: the indicatorsn't I just look at charts. I mean, I'm
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: more comfortable of that. And my attitude is I think
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: all these indicators are just vivetives or price anyway. Yeah,
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: so and my eneving averages and oscillators and all the Yeah,
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: they're just they're just formulations of price, so you're really
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: not getting anything more and price, you're just getting it
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: in a different type of picture. And my analogy for
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: that is it's, you know, you take something like sunglasses,
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: and some people are like an amber collar better. So
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, bluish callar better. You know, it's
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: a personal taste. And and some people who work one
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: call it work better. For some people who one call
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: it work better. For other people, it's amount of personal taste.
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: So in my case, I just like the plain charts,
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: plain vanilla clear. But but not you're not an Elliott
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: wave guy, You're not a demark. I'm not out of again,
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: an analyst or Fibonacci or my approach, and again I'm
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: not a great trader, but my approach basically is just
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: look at the charts for an opinion. Could be trend,
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: could be trend following type, trade, could be counter trend.
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: But evil way, it's got some sort of reasonable of
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: the charts while I'm looking at it that way, And
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: in every case, I'm putting in a stop along with
- 1:07:05Speaker 1: the entry. So so does all let me ask you
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: a slightly different questions, does all this charting software that's
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: out there. Uh so anyone could have access to an
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: immense amount of technical analysis that really wasn't all that
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: available when I was starting. What has that done to
- 1:07:23Speaker 1: the world of trading? If anything? I don't know. Yeah.
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: I think for some people they learned to use some
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: of those indicators in certain ways that work for them,
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: and so it gives them there's like it's much more variety.
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: And then so far as people need to find a
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: way that works for them, it makes it possible. Just
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: multiplies tremendously the amount of ways people can trade the markets.
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: So I guess in that way it's probably useful. But
- 1:07:45Speaker 1: no matter back then and now there's only gonna be all,
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: you know, smaller number of people that will excel in
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: the markets. Alright, so I know I only have you
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: for a few minutes longer. Let me get to my
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: list of favorite questions and start plowing into this. Let's
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: let's jump right in with the mentors. So you mentioned
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: my mentors. Yeah, so the one mentor I really have
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: one mentor, and that mentor would be would be Steve
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: Chronowitz because he's he's a fellow. Taught me classical chart
- 1:08:14Speaker 1: analysis and uh yeah, and I didn't read actually never
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: even read and I never I had to ment this.
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: I never read the classical charge books and everything else
- 1:08:22Speaker 1: McGee and yeah, which was not. I just ended up
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: not because I learned. I learned the basic things from
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: from Steve and then from probably markets. I fund everybody,
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: if you look at charts, you get your own biases
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: certain things. And uh, I I'll mention another fellow who's
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: a close friend, Peter Brandt. And not that he's a friend,
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: although Pete is well known on Twitter and traders who
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: follow him. Yeah, so uh not that not that I
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: meant to say, not that he's a mentor um because
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: but but he is. He and I are very similar
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: in the type of approach. I mean we may not
- 1:08:58Speaker 1: look at the child and get the same opinion sometimes yes,
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: sometimes No, that's not what we're similar. But it's the
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: same type of thought that you know you're only gonna
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: win a certain sentences your time. You always know your
- 1:09:07Speaker 1: risk point is much more important. To keep your losses
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: controlled and uh, and be unemotional and just use just
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: use the information. Don't try to make the markets work,
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: you know, do what you wanted to do. Just follow
- 1:09:19Speaker 1: what the markets are telling you and it's a lot
- 1:09:21Speaker 1: of similar philosophy, so not not necessarily a mentor question,
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: but what other of all the traders and investors we mentioned,
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: who who influenced you philosophically? It sounds like Brandon you
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: are very sympatico. But in the formative days. But yeah,
- 1:09:39Speaker 1: in the formative days. Um well, I I would say,
- 1:09:42Speaker 1: of all, there are a number of people who made
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: the same point. But as a line that sticks in
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: my mind, U maybe the single most important sentence that
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: anybody uttered, you know, okay, that that's a that's something
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: to get people right right is Bruce Covernor's line is
- 1:09:58Speaker 1: always know where you're gonna get out before you get in.
- 1:10:01Speaker 1: You know, I started on a desk with the head
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: of the desk was a marine jungle combat instructor. This
- 1:10:09Speaker 1: is a big, badass guy, and you know, he had
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: the same exact line, but he would always couch it
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: in marine terms. He said, before you take you're gonna
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: take a village, You're gonna take a house, You're gonna
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: take a hell. You have to know we're getting in,
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: we're getting out, but we have to know what's our exit,
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: and if that exit is blocked, what's our plan B
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: and what's our plans? Say you always have if you
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: want to get out alive, you have to know what
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: your exit strategy is and what the alternatives are if
- 1:10:38Speaker 1: something MUCKs up that person. And that sounds very much
- 1:10:42Speaker 1: like what what Coke said, only only that's got a
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: little more mud and and and teeth in it. Well,
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: the one thing I would add to that is also
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: that the key about it is that what he's really
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: saying there is dude, before you get in, because that's
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: when used to have objectivity. You're your objective kind of
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: motion it. Don't do it, don't have bullets or your
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: analogy works. Don't do it in the heat of combat
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: when you're playing. That's exactly right that that's my analogy
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: is you know that that card in the seat back
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: in front of you, Well you're on the ground. That's
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: when you want to read it and see where where
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: the right, where the exits, where's the flotation devices? Not
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: oh look the wing is on fire, which was on
- 1:11:23Speaker 1: the news today at thirty feet probably not the time
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: where you're gonna have the presence of mind to learn
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: anything from that. So so let's talk a little bit
- 1:11:31Speaker 1: about books. We've been talking about your books? What other
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: books have you read fiction, nonfiction, investing, not what other
- 1:11:39Speaker 1: books have you found to be Hey, people should read this? Okay, well,
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: I I'd recommend as as authors um for for if no,
- 1:11:47Speaker 1: even for entertaining purposes. You know, anything Michael Lewis has
- 1:11:50Speaker 1: written is just I think Michael is one of great
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: authors of all time. I mean just surmendously entertaining any
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: but also a brilliant talent. You take a book like
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: The Big Ord, and I gonna appreciate this because I
- 1:12:01Speaker 1: wrote an ente for the market Wizards, I had to
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: cover some of the same territory. Uh To take the
- 1:12:05Speaker 1: complexity what went on there and to make it entertaining
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: and understandable is a talent. Uh So anything he consistently
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: finds these angles to to bring and these personalities to
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: tell the story just just wonderful. I will admit I
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: have never read one of his books. I've read all
- 1:12:25Speaker 1: of his books except one. It's eat Way to Say It.
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: And I'm saving The blind Side from my next vacation
- 1:12:31Speaker 1: because I always read his books and I will plas
- 1:12:34Speaker 1: him in a day, The Big Short a day, Flashboys
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: a day, money Ball a day, You sit on the beach,
- 1:12:42Speaker 1: it's like, wow, yeah it was. It's it's it's it's entertaining,
- 1:12:44Speaker 1: you learn stuff, it's insightful, it's creative. Yeah. So uh
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: another offer I would put you know, very high up
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: and and who influence I think will stay for a
- 1:12:55Speaker 1: long time does not seem to tell that. Uh So,
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: I guess Xwan is probably the most famous book. Personally
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: by randomness is more famous and more useful, well, personally
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: fooled by randomness and and tally would not agree with me.
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: But but because I think he thinks block Swan is
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: his best book, I think I'm not sure, but I
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: I think Fooled by Randomness he is not, just because
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: it was the first of those type of books, but
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: it really got all the key lessons and it's it's
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: so much captured how a lot of what people think
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: is skill is really luck and and confused two and
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: and also not appreciate the fact that there are the
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: tail nature of events in the markets as uh, and
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: that and and so all those themes really come out
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: very well. It's a shame that he's not going to
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: hear this interview because I tweeted, I retweeted something somebody
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: else had written and he was so angry at that
- 1:13:50Speaker 1: person that he not only did he block them on Twitter,
- 1:13:54Speaker 1: but he blocked me. Oh, I know it was. It
- 1:13:56Speaker 1: was Noah Smith, who writes for Who's and let me go?
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: So let me give Aroduce here. Noah Smith, who's a blogger, economist, blogger,
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: and tollaly By. Noah hates him. But Noah Smith is
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: for a guy who writes short, succinct articles on on
- 1:14:14Speaker 1: economics that are pertinent. They're they're just extremely well explained.
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: He's not He's not a liberal. He's not a conservative.
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: He's That's why I love about Let me let me
- 1:14:26Speaker 1: share a little inside baseball with you about Noah Smith.
- 1:14:29Speaker 1: So I'm the guy who brought Noah Smith to Bloomberg View.
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: How how do I know Noah Smith? So he comes.
- 1:14:35Speaker 1: Listen to his background. It's really fascinating. I think he
- 1:14:38Speaker 1: comes out of Berkeley with a degree in physics. Then
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: he goes to Michigan University of Michigan to to get
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: his PhD in economics. Then he's teaching at my alma
- 1:14:49Speaker 1: matera State University of New York at Stony Brook in
- 1:14:52Speaker 1: the economics department I've spoken to his class a couple
- 1:14:54Speaker 1: of times, and when Bloomberg View was coming together. Um
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: I every now and then would say, Hey, are you
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: looking for a guy to cover this or that? Yes,
- 1:15:05Speaker 1: send the name. So a number of people I referred
- 1:15:08Speaker 1: them to ultimately became writers here. I always loved for
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: the same reasons that you do Noah Smith's work. He's
- 1:15:16Speaker 1: a fascinating guy. Then add to that just absolutely brilliant,
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: smart as a whip. Add to that, PSC speaks fluent
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: Japanese and spends summers in Japan every year for the
- 1:15:28Speaker 1: past decade. This is really an interesting, unusual talk about
- 1:15:33Speaker 1: eclectic physics, economics Japanese. But he right, and he writes
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: very clearly, very very understandable, takes really complex issues and
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: makes it really accessible. From what I followed with him
- 1:15:47Speaker 1: and Teleb, he used the concept of a black swan,
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: apparently in a way that Teleb was not happy about. Now,
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: last I checked, TELEB doesn't have the trademark on a
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: black swan, meaning we were expecting this and we got
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: something else. Oh and by the way, it was a
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: tail event. It was a low probability but significant outcome event.
- 1:16:10Speaker 1: I think the two of them use the phrase slightly differently.
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: And look, I have no beef with with to Leb,
- 1:16:17Speaker 1: and I love Noah Smith's work. He went so postal
- 1:16:20Speaker 1: at him. To Leb went so postal at Smith for
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: for writing this. He was so angry at me merely
- 1:16:27Speaker 1: for retweeting it. He goes, I just can't continent you
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: you retweeting this, and I have to block you so
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: and we should tell people for Noah Smith. His his
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: blog is called no No No opinion, with the word
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: Noah an opinion to combine sort of a uh, I
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: forgot the word of what what what that's called? When
- 1:16:47Speaker 1: you when you combine? Uh, it's on the tip of
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: my tongue. Um. I I don't have an issue with Teleb,
- 1:16:53Speaker 1: but I find his his work to be fascinating. I
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: don't think he what he does on Twitter is a
- 1:17:00Speaker 1: good look, crushing it, you know, getting into fights with
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: people at the time. But I understand it. Listen, we
- 1:17:07Speaker 1: all have a certain amount of road rage that doesn't
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: suffer that doesn't suffer fools, but exactly exactly. But I
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: think sometimes maybe he may confuse you know, uh, who
- 1:17:22Speaker 1: the fools are? You know? So yeah, no, that that's
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: exactly listen if when over the weekend following Brexit, I
- 1:17:30Speaker 1: saw a data point that said, um, you know, you
- 1:17:34Speaker 1: look at how the older folks voted, they voted overwhelmingly
- 1:17:38Speaker 1: to leave. And you look at how the younger folks vote,
- 1:17:41Speaker 1: and they voted overwhelming in these stay And I saw
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: I tweeted this data point out that had come from
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: one of the UK papers, and and someone tweeted tweeted
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: the line with there's a British soldier saluting in a
- 1:17:58Speaker 1: in a huge cemetery and they tweeted, yeah, what did
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: the old folks ever do for the UK? And I
- 1:18:05Speaker 1: had to call the guy out. I'm like, well, if
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: you're eighty and you voted for Brexit, that's fantastic. You
- 1:18:10Speaker 1: were three years old when World War two started, so
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: please do some basic math and stop lying about this.
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: You already won, but you don't have to. You could
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: stop lying now that you won. You don't have to.
- 1:18:24Speaker 1: And I just I felt myself wanting to go full
- 1:18:27Speaker 1: talent the guy. But there's a difference between calling out
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: someone who's intellectually dusanest someone who's a liar not suffering
- 1:18:36Speaker 1: fools glad, And I was very surprised when I saw
- 1:18:38Speaker 1: there was some you know, comments that he was inking.
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: I didn't really read the whole thing, not see him
- 1:18:41Speaker 1: come back on BlackBerry and and no, we we miss you,
- 1:18:45Speaker 1: we love you, and and be less of a By
- 1:18:47Speaker 1: the way, he's another guy that I would love to
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: have on the show, but I'm afraid he'll just chew
- 1:18:52Speaker 1: the furniture. He's you know, I've met him, I've had
- 1:18:55Speaker 1: lunch with him. I think he's an interesting guy. He's
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: certainly smart enough. I maybe it's a generational thing. I
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: got enough of a foot in the under fifty, asked him.
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: I'd ask him on Twitter, but I'm but I'm blocked.
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: But all right, let's let's not um have this. Let's
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: let's go back to what other books besides Michael Lewis
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: and Not seemed to like. Okay, what are the books
- 1:19:18Speaker 1: do you find? Well? I mentioned Reminiscence of the Stock Operators,
- 1:19:22Speaker 1: Beat the Deal or Beat the Market, and then my,
- 1:19:25Speaker 1: uh yeah, my favorite book, my personal favorite book of
- 1:19:28Speaker 1: all time. One of the only books I've read several
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: times is a book called Endurance about Shock Shackleton's uh
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: endurance Endurance, So it was original book there has been
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: several books about Shackleton that the Anton. Now, yeah, there's
- 1:19:43Speaker 1: a movies and stuff I think well have been. Uh,
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: but that first book, I think it was by Lansing,
- 1:19:49Speaker 1: which was written if I remember I remember, I think
- 1:19:51Speaker 1: it was written fifty five. But it is the most
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: compelling story. Uh. It is just just so tell quickly
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: tell the shaff So the shack the story an antontic
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: expedition bottom line gets stuck trapped in the ice. Uh
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: and in middle life is no, they just have nothing
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: and uh they by all means they should have been. Yeah,
- 1:20:12Speaker 1: they hunted to some extent, but they couldn't be rescued
- 1:20:16Speaker 1: for for years. But I almost don't want to say
- 1:20:19Speaker 1: what happened or what happened with survival because because it's
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: because you don't know. If you don't know, it makes
- 1:20:24Speaker 1: much more interesting. But as a tale of survival, it is.
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: If it's not the best tale of survival ever written,
- 1:20:33Speaker 1: it's um and you you know you an endurance, I
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: mean the endurance. Endurance is well titled and there are
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: so many images in there and so many, so many
- 1:20:43Speaker 1: it's the story itself is so compelling. Uh, it's just
- 1:20:47Speaker 1: a great reason I'll put that on my list. That
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: sounds fascinating. Um So since you joined the finance industry,
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: what what are some of the most significant changes that
- 1:20:56Speaker 1: you've you've witnessed. Well, we talked about the floors disappear ring,
- 1:21:00Speaker 1: you know, tremendousity, the computers, I mean, the whole why
- 1:21:04Speaker 1: I started out in the day or we we you know,
- 1:21:07Speaker 1: most people, we didn't have quotepaciet you know, on desk.
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: We had these giant wall boards where the click and
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: that was technology, the board wall boards which you know,
- 1:21:16Speaker 1: clicked every time the price changed. Technology has been a
- 1:21:19Speaker 1: tremendous change, and that's that's brought into uh into existence
- 1:21:22Speaker 1: a whole bunch of uh the approaches that would have
- 1:21:25Speaker 1: been impossible because of the calculations of all the just
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: two intends to do any other way. So you have
- 1:21:30Speaker 1: a change the nature of trading in that sense. Um,
- 1:21:35Speaker 1: I guess a lot more strategies. I mean, it used
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: to be much simpler and you got you got a
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: fifty eight different head fund strategies now all sorts of
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: arcane stuff. So those are some of that changes. But
- 1:21:45Speaker 1: human nature doesn't change. And that's where the similarity of
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: markets remains so given the technology changes in the past,
- 1:21:53Speaker 1: what what do you think might be some of the
- 1:21:55Speaker 1: next major shifts we see going forward? See, I'm not
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: a predictor. I don't know. You know that's the right answer, don't.
- 1:22:02Speaker 1: I always like that answer. If nobody if you don't know,
- 1:22:05Speaker 1: you're better off saying that then then guessing. And so
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: few people in this industry of willingness. I never I
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: never answer a question. You know, I don't think I
- 1:22:12Speaker 1: know the answer to right now. But by the way,
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: I've done enough TV in my career that when someone
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: asked you a question and you say I don't know,
- 1:22:19Speaker 1: it throws them off. They have no idea what I've
- 1:22:22Speaker 1: done that? So where's the down gonna be? Right right?
- 1:22:25Speaker 1: I don't know. They look at you like you have
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: two heads. Come on, give me a number seven I've
- 1:22:30Speaker 1: done in three I remember doing inenter you in Australia
- 1:22:32Speaker 1: and I said, look, you know, I can talk about
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: training and I can talk about this. I don't but
- 1:22:36Speaker 1: that because I don't ask me. I'm not. You don't
- 1:22:38Speaker 1: ask me, I'm not and I'm not fo First question,
- 1:22:41Speaker 1: what do you think the Australian stock Market's gonna do
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: you know, I have no idea and it's basically what
- 1:22:47Speaker 1: I answered. So, um, so let's get to our our
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: two are too, uh A two favorite questions that we
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: ask all of our guests. So a millennial or Reese
- 1:23:00Speaker 1: graduate comes to you and says, I'm thinking of getting
- 1:23:02Speaker 1: into finance as a career. What sort of advice would
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: you give them? Oh that's a tough one. Uh you're
- 1:23:10Speaker 1: talking about trading, You're talking just finances, anything and anything,
- 1:23:13Speaker 1: and uh, well, uh, first make sure it's what you
- 1:23:17Speaker 1: really want to do. I mean, it's not you're not
- 1:23:19Speaker 1: just looking to do for the money. Um, you know.
- 1:23:26Speaker 1: I guess in terms of finding a job, probably the
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: only effective way to do it these days is networking.
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: Umbo career itself. The treer has to be geared to
- 1:23:37Speaker 1: something that well, you want to go with your strength. So, uh,
- 1:23:41Speaker 1: if you can write, you want to try to find
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: an angle it and fanthasized writing. If you can do analytics,
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: he didn't do that. If you good in computers, you know,
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: so take advantage of your strength and try to break
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: into the career on your strong point. Basically, focus on
- 1:23:54Speaker 1: your strong point and and our last question, um, what
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: is it that you know about investing today you wish
- 1:24:01Speaker 1: you knew thirty plus years ago when you started. Well.
- 1:24:04Speaker 1: Uh that one of the themes of Marco Wizzards is
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: that the risk of management is more important than than
- 1:24:11Speaker 1: trading strategy. Uh. Oh you know what. Uh And this
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: is what I've made mistake I've made made made more recently,
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: and I wish I learned much quicker. And even if
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: I learned it, I kind of repeated it. Hopefully I'll
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: never repeat it again. But um, and maybe my my
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: biggest flaw as a trader is be careful of getting
- 1:24:30Speaker 1: too complacent when you're doing very well. Uh so all
- 1:24:34Speaker 1: my you know, for for years and years, every time
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: I've had any significant draw downs, that's always been after
- 1:24:41Speaker 1: I've done extremely well. Yeah, you know that I've witnessed
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: that and experienced it. So I'm I'm actually I'm actually
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: superb at not at coming in for a small steak
- 1:24:50Speaker 1: and even just controlling the lost tiny amount or not
- 1:24:53Speaker 1: losing anything and just getting ahead and never being behind.
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: I'm really really good at that. Um. But I'm really
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: been terror ball about once I get ahead, not a lot,
- 1:25:02Speaker 1: you know, than than giving back a chunk, which I would,
- 1:25:06Speaker 1: But because I do things or take more risk, or
- 1:25:10Speaker 1: do things differently than I would have done when I
- 1:25:12Speaker 1: was being so super cautious. So when i'm when I
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: thought out in the beginning, I'm every time I got
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: and I don't trade all the time, so it depends
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: on how busy i'm. But every time I saw trading,
- 1:25:20Speaker 1: I started very small and very cautious, and that's when
- 1:25:22Speaker 1: I'm best. So it's so funny you say that when
- 1:25:24Speaker 1: I when I began as a trader, I ended up
- 1:25:26Speaker 1: creating a number of rules, one of which was never
- 1:25:29Speaker 1: let a profit turn into a loss. But then mid nineties,
- 1:25:33Speaker 1: just like you talked, what happens when you have these
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: giant winners. So that's where the rule came from, which
- 1:25:39Speaker 1: is when you're up x percent and x has to
- 1:25:42Speaker 1: be substantial. If you give back, that's it cut cut
- 1:25:46Speaker 1: your losses, and I think, and there's something along there.
- 1:25:49Speaker 1: So in other words, you you're up a hundred up,
- 1:25:51Speaker 1: now I'm alling up seventy five. That's it. I'm out.
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: Otherwise we've all seen those round trips too many times. Jack.
- 1:25:58Speaker 1: This is absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much, Thank you
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: so much for doing this, for those of you who
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: are still with us almost two hours later. Um, we've
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: been speaking with Jack Squager. He is the author of
- 1:26:13Speaker 1: the Complete Guide to Futures Trading. Look for the new
- 1:26:15Speaker 1: edition coming out in the fall. Market Wizards, Stock Market Wizards,
- 1:26:20Speaker 1: New Market Wizards, and Hedge Fund Wizards, as well as
- 1:26:24Speaker 1: the Little Book of Market Wizards. Diday I got I
- 1:26:27Speaker 1: nailed them all. Uh, and be sure and check out
- 1:26:30Speaker 1: Jack's new entrepreneurial venture UH fund seater dot com, where
- 1:26:35Speaker 1: you could see how they are trying to find the
- 1:26:39Speaker 1: new uh, the new emerging managers. Perhaps, if you're an
- 1:26:42Speaker 1: active trader, you might want to register at fund seater
- 1:26:45Speaker 1: and see if eventually they find you as as one
- 1:26:49Speaker 1: of the outstanding performers. If you have enjoyed this conversation,
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: be sure and look Up an Inch or Down an
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: Inch on Apple iTunes and see any of the other
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: nineties seven or so such chats that we've had. Check
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com, or you
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter. Are you on Twitter these days? Jack? Yeah?
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: I am Jack Schweger Jack at Jack Schweger. Um, I
- 1:27:13Speaker 1: would be remiss if I did not think Taylor Riggs
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: my booker, Charlie Volmer our producer, and Reggie our recording engineer.
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio,
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