Spamming techniques are used for worthless products, with each new glowing review, I aim to show you my book is not worthless. But just to show you how different I am from the rest, I'm gonna pick apart my book and write a negative review on it for TheStreet.com, I welcome input!
Next wave of SPAM will be Timmay selling cheesy DVD on trading penny stocks (..maybe also an infomercial to "teach" and pimp DVD...), More SPAM from Sykes: a failed american hedge fund manager!
Dude, you just don't get why I called my publishing company BullShip Press---you're damn right I'm gonna be pimping my instructional trading DVD, but it's not cheesy, nor is it snake-oil--it's all my trades (both good and bad), stock charts, experiences and lessons learned in 6 hours. cutting through all the BS baby!
Maybe Tim Sykes should move to Russia and become an oligarch dude; that would allow better media control, better censorship etc...
Ha, I don't need censorship, I've got nothing to hide and I'm willing to share everything! Once you realize this, then we can work together and try to figure out how to profit more.
Tim, You have averaged less than 1%/yr since 2003.... So, let us know when you have audited proof that shows you are better than T-bills....
You're forgetting that my fund was up 70% before Cygnus. My trading strategies still hold true, the patterns still exist, waiting to be taken advantage of, and now I am all the wiser. Any DVD or book I would've written before this loss would've been harmful---now I've experienced both the ups and the downs so I'm qualified to talk about all the risks and rewards.
disclaimer: my main way of trading is pretty similar to the author's manner: shorting big, potentially unsustainable runups in junky / hyped stocks for quick gains. i try and keep this out of the review. the title of timothy sykes' self-published book, _an american hedge fund: how i made $2 million as a stock operator and created a hedge fund_ offers great promise. any trader who has versed up on the classical trading books would instantly recognize the subtitle as a combination of two of the greatest trading books ever, nicolas darvas _how i made two million in the stock market_ and edwin lefevre's (auto)biography of jesse livermore, _reminiscences of a stock operator_. unfortunately, the only similarity between these classics and sykes' book is in the titles. the aforementioned classics brought much to the table; lefevre's books offered trading lessons never previously brought into print and darvas' book gave a simple, trend-following system on how to beat the market which helped many future traders. _american hedge fund_, unfortunately, serves up an appetizer and dessert and calls it a full course meal. the central theme for sykes' book seems to be one of ego. most of his mistakes are admitted by the author because of his great ego, and many of his public actions appear to be caused by an insatiable appetite to become the next jim cramer. and while cramer had a 10+ year career as a serious hedge fund manager with significant funds under his control, sykes' fund ran (the author has stated the fund has now been closed) for a few years with a mere pittance of capital compared to others. the author details the well-recited tale of turning his bar mitzvah money into a significant grub stake during the end of the nasdaq bubble, by capitalizing, along with others, on the momentum boom. to the author's credit, he learned that things had changed in 2000, and didn't give back much of the hard-earned gains from the runup. instead, he started focusing on shorting stocks, which led to his still-favorite successful trading method of being short "unsustainable" runups in smaller cap stocks. but for those looking to start up a hedge fund, sykes doesn't get into too much detail on the real meat and bones behind creating a hedge fund. instead he spends most of his time complaining about SEC rules, touting his effort to get his name out to the public, and complaining about becoming highly leveraged in an illiquid pink sheet stock. this rookie mistake was compounded by continuing to deposit more money into the company. reading up on some of the published (and internet-accessible) material on the subject would have saved sykes hundreds of thousands of dollars, and us the dreariness of reading about it. sykes keeps comparing his trading record to larger hedge funds, and then wondering why he doesn't have access to larger investors. anyone who would study sykes' record, even without access to the specific trades, would come up with one of two conclusions: either too much risk was taken on, or because the trading method is not scalable! this story would have been much more interesting if sykes had delved more seriously into the hedge fund industry, but i suspect that he could only see it through the eyes of his tiny in-name-only hedge fund, which would not offer a clear view of the shenanigans of the industry. who would enjoy this book? people who watch cnbc as a hobby or a social friend. voyeurs who like to imagine the successes of others being their own. and, sure, people who have never read a trading book before - or don't know what things were like in the late 1990s - can gain some information here. it is well-written, even when it strays from the main focus of a trading book. but with the proliferation of so many better trading books and with this one having such a misleading title, why spend the money to get this one? i have no doubt that sykes, when he sticks to his basic setups, is a successful trader. that's not something many people can say. his story should have been one of many, a la _market wizards_ or _millionaire traders_, and not worthy of his own book. and until he removes his ego from of the equation and focuses on going beneath the superficial level, it will be difficult for people to take his actions seriously.
If that was really true, you would be a successful trader and never need to SPAM ET to sell your book/dvd.