Victor Niederhoffer and Nassim Nicholas Taleb: A Quick Comparison

Discussion in 'Psychology' started by Frederick Foresight, Jun 23, 2015.

  1. Gambit

    Gambit

    Just a thought. If you'd invested with Niederhoffer, how much did you lose? If you invested with Taleb, how much did you lose? Which investor is contemplating suicide?
     
    #51     Jun 26, 2015
  2. They are both great. VN has helped a lot of people and some of the people working for him became millionaires so he definitely did something right. Yes he blew up but a little mouse like me can certainly learn more from him and his mistakes than from NNT who doesn't really say much about what Empirica does.

    They buy far out of the money puts options but still one has to have a system to do so. In the last 5 years the market went nowhere but up. You would have got killed just by buying puts. I can only assume that they also buy far out of the money call options among other strategies.

    For this year, 2015 their fund is up 20% they claimed they made 1 B on August 21st when something that was not supposed to happen...you guessed it, happened.

    At the same time some of the best professional option sellers like LJM Partners and Max Ansbacher were down about -14% for August and while it's bad it is far from blowing up.
    As a matter of fact they are both positive for the year.

    I agree with the OP when he says that the truth lies somewhere in between. In my modest opinion that the vast majority of traders gravitate somewhere between their two different styles. Just always remember that in the long run if you blow up when trading everything else is irrelevant.

    I write partially hedged options to make a little in a different variety of markets and always try to cut my losses short so I rarely make big gains, but I have better chances to survive and go on another day.
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2015
    #52     Sep 29, 2015
    marketsurfer and lawrence-lugar like this.