I read a little fast here. I thought the OP had bumped his old post. Well, if you found the right Weinstein, that is. Googling his name, you'll find a dozen different Weinstein, so it seems to be a more common name than you'd believe. With the type of success he had as depicted in Market Wizards, I'd doubt you'd see him working an ordinary job, but who knows.
You are however indeed correct that there are plenty traders that experience success in one time period and end up losing in the next. Certainly not in disagreement there. But like I said, I wouldn't believe that to be the case with Weinstein, since he was very well off and seemed to be risk averse at the time of that interview. Also, he seemed to have been successful for a long period of time through different market cycles and not just a hot shot trader for a year or two like some of the traders that for instance Brett Steenbarger detailed in his books. But of course, that's just my assumptions.
He actually did, but that bump was still in last October. I have to confess, I used Bing to find the Linkedin link, because I assumed OP used google. Anyhow, the original Weinstein must be much older, so this is not that guy. Weinstein was already a real estate broker in 1972, he should be 70 or so today. My understanding is that the original run was in the mid-80s, so that was a long time ago, and markets change. Even if he made a small fortune back then that could have evaporated later on and nobody wrote about that. I like to do researches, so I will see what I can dig up.... I own the book, so I am rereading the chapter first... ---------------------------- To make a 8 times return with options isn't such a high probability. It takes only 3 doubling trades, so playing earnings, assuming the position doubles, it is a 1/8th chance.
http://www.mjwinvestments.com/mark-weinstein/ Depends on how smart you're with your money. If you earn a fortune, you wouldn't continue risking it in the market, but park it somewhere safe where it generates your 'income stream'. Ideally. But sure, there's plenty of stories of dwindled fortunes. I believe it was Michael Marcus or some other Market Wizard that invested in real estate and lost a lot of money through that.
He did mentor at least one guy, Leigh Stevens: http://scalping1.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-idol-mark-weinstein.html "It happened that Mark took me under his wing, or took pity on my ignorance of how the market 'really' works and mentored me beginning when I was a trader/stockbroker at Morgan Stanley (then Dean Witter). I met Mark through a friend. It was chance or serendipity really. He liked to talk and I liked to listen about my favorite topic of technical analysis. Mark had learned from or studied with every important successful trader/analyst type out there at the time." This guy later wrote a TA book: Essential Technical Analysis: Tools and Techniques to Spot Market Trends ----------------------- The MJW investment guy is younger and his name is different with a J.... But let's keep looking we will find him, it is going to rain for 5 days anyway... We could contact his mentoree, Stevens, he is still in the trading education business: http://www.optioninvestor.com/page/oin/education/traders/2012/05-13.20-01-59.html Edit: Maybe it is him and that is an old picture, because here is the same picture: http://www.donttalkaboutyourstocks.com/market-wizard-mark-weinstein/ Edit2: I think the above website is using mistakenly the MJW picture. The original Weinstein is balding on the LBR dinner picture posted earlier.
A friend of my father from the CBOE once told the story that in the 80s the bonds were the big game, and the SP was like the little tail of the dog. In those days they had a squawk box to the bond pit and another to the SP pit. Let's say the bonds were 03-04, and a big bid came in, and started paying 04, and then 04 bid, more often than not the SP would jump 4-5 tics, in those days the prices were about 200.00 for the SP and the tic size 0.05. Marty Schwartz once spoke of this, and I believe he was good friends with Weinstein and Marty Zweig, same synagogue. Schwartz and Zweig lived in the same building in NY. Schwartz used it only to time his low risk entries for other methods, but Weinstein basically operated like a pit trader from outside the pit. I don't know anything about their longer timeframe speculation methods, other than what Schwartz wrote in Pit Bull, except that they used the bread and butter just described to fund the other things. In those days the OEX options were the biggest index market in the world, and I believe those OEX trades were Weinstein's specialty.