How did he maintain his haircut on the SP position if he blew-up in thai equities and fx? He brought suit against Refco and the CME. So now he ran $2-million to $346-million? I'll assume that refers to "otherwise". Vic the altruist. He's certainly helped his current crop of clients, although 2006 was shaky. I don't think his 1997 fund clients would necessarily agree with your statement. "IMO" he took the easy route and decided to leverage short gamma. Intellectually-lazy. Pretty ironic considering the guy considers himself the second coming of Newton. I simply take issue with Surfer's comments that his 1997 demise was related to some cabal. He sold puts into a 50-handle decline and sued his clearing firm and the exchange. I hear it's the premise for MI:IV
seriously, atticus, you are highly skilled with options, however your out of your knowledge base commenting here. the exchange closed early among other things, and by the way, VN won the suit against the exchange for their questionable business practice on that day furthermore, VN has handled those losses in a gentlemanly and honest way with the clients, including waving fees for new investment. regard, surf
I only skimmed it, but they're probably quoted in that Bloomberg article earlier in the thread. Atticus, as far as "otherwise", he also bankrolls several traders with his own cash, and that's had to have come from somewhere. Besides, even if the growth isn't organic (of course it's not), he has to have put up numbers to get investment. Look, the short version of the VN story is this: he is very, very smart. He is also totally unable to see anything other than the bull side in equities. If it was so easy to do what's he's done, many more would have done it.
He took a 30% hit on some 1100-strike puts last year -- there is no IQ prereq to sell skewed puts. I'll close in adding that Maverick from ET met the guy and mentioned somewhere that he know longer relies on short gamma.
eh so vic's main strat is shorting naked puts?i assume that somewhere if the trade goes wrong he covers with underlying?
returns, without risk noted are meaningless sure, victor had decent returns, but clearly the amount of risk he was exposing his (and more importantly - OTHERS) money to in order to get those returns was ludicrous. i mentioned a while back that I used an IB demo account to get over 300% returns in a little over 2 months, with just a couple of trades. i loaded gold futures and nikkei futures. and i got lucky big whoop the risk was tremendous (which didn't matter cause it was a paper account), which is the point. i find neiderhoffer amusing, and i respect his intelligence. but with a good trader, intelligence is tempered by humility and caution his, was not
a pattern of your behavior: you hate vic and taleb. two very different traders. i take it, you trade somewhere in the middle and are profitable? what do you do that is so fantastic that you can trash these two guys?
why the hate?? the book is full of nuggets of information and is a very entertaining read. 85 plus reviewers on amazon disagree with you. furthermore: education is revolutionary in the way that it makes clear the innerworkings of one of, if not the greatest living speculator/trader of the 20th/21st century. it teaches a method of thinking, analysing that any trader can apply to improve their game. sorry that you just don't get it--- surf http://www.amazon.com/Education-Spe...6612923?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179452119&sr=8-1