I used to love reading these books but as I've gotten more experienced, I honestly think most of these guys here were just cowboys who got lucky and there is no real substantial applicable trading lessons from them. Not quoting but I know there are similar stories to "I was on vacation, and I decided to take 40k of my savings and buy wheat futures"... shit seems wreckless AF. How is that sustainable or even repeatable as a valid trading edge? It seems like just a lot of BS anecdotes on trading from these guys like "When my positions are losing, I get out". Okay... but that's not a one size fits all approach. A lot of times positions will go against you because entry techniques are rarely perfect. It sounds good on paper but has zero application to real-world trading in my experience. Seems like it's a pipedream what some of these guys did in terms of trading success. I used to admire these guys when I was younger, but now that I'm older and a bit wiser realize most of this is just good stories, a lot of luck, and no real application to your trading.
The market can only go up or down. Pick one or the other. Somebody has got to win. I only read a few pages from each different Market Wizards. What i am waiting for is a Market Wizards on funded trading. When is this coming out surely somebody has noticed this is a hot topic.
A fair number of people credit the Market Wizards series with key insights of theirs, but I can't say that's the case for me. Perhaps it's mostly valuable as a source of inspiration if you read it early enough. Being lucky at key junctures certainly was a recurrent theme in some of the stories, but not all. There's inevitably going to be a strong survivorship bias in this type of material nonetheless.