Interested to know what would be potentially the common factors causing their problematic performance. Perhaps one day a follow-up book about them would be quite saleable!
Cohen and PTJ are both billionaires. Bruce Kovner (another original market wizard) is a billionaire too. Probably don't have as much bank as Soros but then he's a good twenty years older than those guys. He's also gone off the deep end as of late.
Out of curiousity, does anyone know the styles of these guys (Cohen, PTJ and Bruce Kovner), i.e. are they general medium term trend followers like Dunn and John Henry?
Yeh, it seems like no trader/investor can really last very long at the top. Soros and Julien Robertson both called it quits after they suffered huge losses late in their career. Soros himself said that he has got a good chance of staying at the top of the performance rankings because he doesnt trade anymore. I think the only trader/investor that has truly withstood the test of time has been the Oracle of Omaha.
Kovner and PTJ are Global Macro, which means they capture market movements based on economic trends. Cohen on the other hand is widely characterized as a traditional long-short equity fella, however, it seems to me he doesn't rely completely on bottom-up stock research and does have an overal idea of broader market trends. He also has made trades in the bond market.
Are you saying that because all the trading guys mentioned above that now are billionaires or close to it (Dunn, PTJ, Kovner, Cohen, John Henry) have all suffered major loss periods during their career unlike the Oracle? In other words, why don't our top traders hold up well to the Oracle?
Here: http://www.streetstories.com/Monroe_Trout.htm you can read that Mr. Trout "believes in moving averages, but not in Fibonacci retracements, Gaan angles, RSI and stochastics". I have a impression that it's exactly the opposite to most ETers techniques. From the same website, Bruce Kovner philosophy: "Stock market has many more short-term countertrends. Whereas, commodities markets are more trending" Well, nothing new.
Not sure I quite understand what you're saying. You're just saying Trout and Kovner are much much closer to traditional TA guys?