I have been reading books off an on for the last 15 years. Authors I feel I have benefitted from were George Douglas Taylor, George Angell and Barry Haig and also Gary Smith.
Havent you figured it out yet? More money is made through trader support (books, systems, training, etc) then through actual trading. Just ask Mr. Bloomberg.
It was before S&P's and most options....very true. But your description of Kroll really doesn't fit HIS description of his trades. Rather, if I were to characterize his description of his trades, it would be that he was more of a long term type of trader, sitting with his position. One silver position he sat with for a year for example. One other characterization would be that he bought setbacks against the major trend. I don't think the essence of his technique as he presented it in his book was to "buy more at higher prices". Maybe you know something that was not in the book? Either way, the point is that Kroll should not properly have been included in the list of the OP, regardless of how he traded. OldTrader
Actually that would be a 453% annualized return. 730,789/18,000 = 40.5994 40.5994 ^ (1 / 2.16667) = 5.5258 (5.5258 - 1) * 100 = 453%
Agreed. Here is a good description of his methodology. http://home.netvigator.com/~raymondo/MMD_Stanley_Kroll.htm I know several people who were his customers when Kroll was working at ML. They all hold him in high regard - both as a trader and as a person. Happy trading.
John Carter's "mastering the trade" has one of the bests intros about how traders get faded by their brokers, and go through massive pain and suffering seeking the holy grail in 3 stages IMO. Don't know much about his track record, but those first few chapters show he's been in the trenches of trading. Also, you could argue dan zanger made it, although good luck to taking on 10% of tzoo float and not getting faded by the other side of your trade. He definitely did not follow conventional risk management. I've argued this before though. In the vast majority of bios I've read, from Soros to Livermore (even pitbull), there always seems to be a very very tiny section of the book, showing how they used insider information to profit. Which is opposite to most traders who operate in the dark. And opposite to what the majority of trading books preach. Some examples of recent things I've come across: People constantly say that those who argue brokers/mms are rigged are conspiracy theorists. Yet, when I recently read turtle trader, they talked about how they didn't speculate in meat markets because it was corrupt and later some of the players were indicted. Now how would the average trader come across this info? Shows they had connections on the floors. Nothing illegal about this, but having that kind of knowledge is a huge boon to the simple trading rules that books profess. I also recently read a book by a CME guru. He told the story of how one of the original CME gurus became one of the greatest trading legends because he went long right before the cuban missile crisis was evaded. The cute story everyone got was that he went long a mint the weekend before the crisis outcome, because "hell, if I'm wrong, no one's going to be here come Monday, so it don't matter." Hailed as a hero for the call. Later, his son revealed to the author that the surrounding story was nothing but myth. The dad actually had extensive contacts in washington that gave him the inside scoop before they made their decisions. Take about any trading book worth it's salt with stories behind the numbers, and you'll find some evidence of how they used information beyond TA to hit the big ones. Zanger (and maybe williams) was about the only one out of the loop to my knowledge. Which surprises me how he was able to take on such large positions and not get taken by those watching his order flow.