All of my examples/replies (and maybe wisdom) kind of talks and refers to about that CIS Japanese trader who was featured in a couple of Bloomberg online articles ...in regards to his trading strategy and ideology. ...and to a lesser extent, Dan Zanger. -- But Dan Zanger was kind of a one hit wonder who busted and was just in the right place, right time, right guy to really nail and execute the late 90's to the Moon for exponential returns. I only study and analyze and care about individual retail traders -- i could care less about fund managers
Taleb writes about VN in his Fooled By Randomness book. Taleb's assessment is actually right on the money on why VN blew up. VN based his trading by testing his hypothesis and if proven correct placed the trade. Simple Eg- SPY has not fallen x% over the last 50 years so I can sell spy options, just because spy has not fallen does not mean it wont fall more. Taleb's black swan theory is that a "Theory can be proven wrong but never right because you cannot evaluate all possible conclusions to make that statement"
In the past I have lost loads of money in very short periods of time. It's very painful and I can see the pain on his face, regardless of position it really sucks when this happens.
I also read his first book, it is an interesting book but I came away with the impression that it was half-baked. The book by his mentee Toby Crabel is much better.
You made me curious, so I looked it up. His book was written 27 years ago, so I wonder how those patterns hold up today? Even the first review on Amazon is 19 years old. A relevant quote from another review: "Toby is a successful hedge fund manager, having worked for Victor Niederhoffer before starting his own company. Toby's returns are good, but his risk management is far better. Toby's funds have grown primarily due to his excellent risk management skills as opposed to his returns. In layman's terms this means that he hardly ever loses money but he doesn't make much for his clients. This is actually fairly unique and he should be commended for finding this niche in the business. I should say that I do know both Toby and Victor, although they are just industry acquaintances, not friends, and I have not seen them in a many years." More on him from Wiki: "Toby Crabel is a United States commodities trader. In 2005, the Financial Times called Crabel "the most well-known trader on the counter-trend side".He is the fund manager of "Crabel Capital Management," which has previously ranked highly on Absolute Return magazine's list of US groups with more than $1 billion Assets under management. Crabel managed 3.2 billion dollars with growth of 16.7% in 2005. Crabel has a strong record of positive returns, having avoided a single losing year between 1991 and 2002... In January 1992, he started running his flagship Diversified Futures program. During 1998, he ran his hedge fund out of his house, located in a rural area northwest of Milwaukee. Diversified Futures closed to new investments in 2001 and had positive returns from inception through 2006." His fund performance: http://ctaperformance.com/crabel In 2008 they were only down -1%...