I'm all about evidence and the evidence suggests he was great before being investigated for insider trading and subsequently restricted and now he's on the verge of joining the 90% of failed traders. Everything else is fairy tale stories as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, it's in Master's In Business podcast by Barry Ritholtz, July 22nd 2016. He did not say Stevie is his favorite rather, he is the best trader he has seen. Link to podcast below. And Tom DeMark uttered similar things on Trend Following podcast with Michael Covel. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audi...-with-jack-schwager-masters-in-business-audio
The proof will be in the pudding. If he's as good as people say he is then the results will show it over the next few years. Have a think also why 2008 was his worst year when he lost 28%. Most good traders would make money in a financial crisis. Renaissance Technologies "From 2001 through 2013, the fund’s worst year was a 21 percent gain, after subtracting fees. Medallion reaped a 98.2 percent gain in 2008, the year the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 38.5 percent."
Not really. Mostly it depends on your area of expertise. For example, statistical arbitrage and HFT strategies have done very well because there was a lot of hurt on the street, resulting in disordered liquidations, spastic hedging and otherwise lack of process in the markets. On the other hand, things like long/short strategies or credit depend on other investors being process-driven too (e.g. if you trade stocks based on fundamentals, you want other investors/traders also to care about these numbers) and also these PMs have a natrual tendency of being long your asset even if hedged. Obviously, people like that got slammed and some of them are/were pretty good at what they do. PS. 2008 and 2011 where the best years for me, but it has very little to do with me being a good or a bad trader. In fact, making a ton of money in 2011 was pure luck that I was really long S&P skew (I can say that here, in an anonymous forum ) PPS. In general, until you live through a crisis like that, it's "easy to say, hard to do". Did you personally make money in 2007-2008? How about 2011 or maybe 2001?
I reiterate, the proof will be in the pudding. One could argue we just went through a period that was favourable towards traders that might underperform during a financial crisis and the results weren't there for SAC.