Options is still exclusively on the floor. Futures are floor and elctronic. ICE is planning to go all electronic later on this year
Yeah, I can't imagine why anyone would want his advice now. He even admitted that he "got lucky" when he made most of that.
Luck....he cashed out before he could give it all back. And now when he's trading with an actual methodology, he has negative gains. He closed his hedge fund which was short-biased as the markets are selling off, what does that tell you?
I still don't see why you would bag on someone who did that well trading. If you take a random ET poster and Tim Sykes I think I would have to put my money on Tim doing a better job investing funds over time. How can you blame him for selling advice when not many people have had the experience he had? Just seems to me like it is easy to hate.
Tells me he is smart for cashing out and will probably come back pretty strong at some point. Retooling is a necessity throughout one's trading life, no?
Is that a joke, the guy lost money shorting stocks in a bear market, what the hell kind of trader is that? He had a losing hedge fund, tell that to the investor's lost money. Trading is all about adapting! He couldn't, look at his track record for the past number of years. His re-tooling consists of going from easy money to the next, instead of grinding through the sweat and tears of finding a new methodology that works he quits trading and becomes an author - falling back on his 'success' he had but couldn't replicate again as a new means of income.
Also i'm pretty sure the average ET'er doesn't start their own hedge fund or write books. This site actually has a ton of great traders that aren't after the easy buck of writing because (here it comes) they can trade! There's a number of great traders I know that also don't waste their time here. I'll gladly listen to them before Tim-i-know-i'm-a-hack-and-got-chased- off-elitetrader-Sykes.
People lose in up markets just like they lose in down markets, it likely depends mostly on what sectors he is playing. Would you happen to have a link to his yearly P/L? I have yet to see it so I don't want to comment further without more info!
I remember seeing it in another thread, maybe someone else could find it..i'll search for it later. But I do seem to remember him having two years of flat/negative net returns. Edit: Wouldn't you say a trader losing money being bullish in a bull market and vice-versa in a bear market is at best average, or below average?
In general, sure. But I don't know his specific methods and what sectors he was playing. If he was short commodity companies over the past year then you could easily say that he is short in a bear market, but you and I both know it depends on what you are trading and that he would have lost money on that "short in a bear market" scenario. If he had been short Dow Futures at the beginning of 2005 or 2006, either one, he would still be out of the money. Let me know if you find that P/L whenever you get a chance to locate it