Collective2, profit.ly, and a host of other sites track performance--- take a look at the history if you want to find out the truth about trading-- OR just keep on living in your fantasy world of pretend. surf
it is the same old market surfer's denial of reality or distortion of reality by refusing to post proof of his statements. he uses the tool of a snakelike salesman by telling other posters to do research, instead of copying and pasting proof of his statements. his posts include facts which are intended to deceive but not to enlighten.. his posts only prove that he is a sycophant, of the worst kind. would some other poster be good enough to post the word that is more commonly used for sycophant?
Don't change the subject. It was about incentives. You wanted an incentive, but if other people ask an incentive to publish performance you find it abnormal. You did not post the track record so it does not exist. That's the Marketsurfer's logic applied to himself. These people who want an incentive don't publish on any of these sites, so you cannot automatically deduct that they are as miserable as those who post on these sites. The fact that they don't post performance is already an indication that they are smart, or at least not as stupid as these posters.
While this can be accurate, one must also consider the very real alternative that those who don't provide records have bad or zero results.
If you really dug deep enough into the "why"...I think that you would find that it is extremely addictive...simple as that. All of that skew embedded in "crash puts" in a market that trends higher leads to so many consecutive winners that it just becomes habit... From all the info that has been leaked over the years, it's clear that was a part of what was done, but it's also pretty clear that there were other strats going on, it's just not clear what percentage those other strats contributed (damaged) the performance.
Wiki's info on Victor shows a huge Alpha, he was one of the best when his method worked well. We hear stories of people getting bored like Benjamin Graham who supposedly mastered the Market and found no joy, I wonder if Victor ever got bored after decades of winning and living like a god? "Niederhoffer Investments returned 35% a year from inception through 1996, when MAR ranked it the No. 1 hedge fund manager in the world. In 1997, Niederhoffer published a New York Times bestselling book, The Education of a Speculator. In statistical terms, I figure I have traded about 2 million contracts, with an average profit of $70 per contract (after slippage of perhaps $20). This average is approximately 700 standard deviations away from randomness.[5]" " 1997 losses[edit] In 1997, Niederhoffer Investments was not finding many opportunities for investments and, having returned much of its funds to customers such as George Soros, began investing the remaining 100 million dollars in areas where Niederhoffer later admitted that he did not have much expertise.[6]Niederhoffer decided to buy Thai bank stocks, which had fallen heavily in the Asian financial crisis, his bet being that the Thai government would not allow these companies to go out of business. On October 27, 1997, losses resulting from this investment, combined with a 554-point (7.2%) single day decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (the eighth[7] largest point decline to date in index history), forced Niederhoffer Investments to close its doors. In a lawsuit that Niederhoffer later filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he tradedoptions, he alleged that floor traders colluded to drive the market down that day to force him out of his positions. Traders at the time said Refco may have been responsible for as much as $35 million of Niederhoffer's losses.[8]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Niederhoffer That answers my question about him being good at Emerging Markets, learn new things every day!
MS, did you ever hear about VN being the first chink in Refco's armor? For newbies they can look up Refco and MF Global, interesting counter from Victor showing his fund had nothing to do with Refco, their own incompetence. On Wall Street more lies and myths gain traction than truth, here's a very intriguing article by Victor. I never heard the Refco and Victor Neiderhoffer myth before today. http://www.dailyspeculations.com/vic/refco.html Edited for a small sample, wet your appetite to read this article, its well worth your time seeing how people lie so much in finance and corrupt blaming their blunders on anyone but the real culprits. " 10/27/2005 Calling it a Day No matter how much detail I go into to show that Refco's association with my firm in 1997 was not a link in its debacle, someone, somewhere, is going to allude to some anonymous source saying something to the effect that Refco's problems started with losses they suffered with me in 1997. The latest was an Oct. 27 Bloomberg story saying that someone said that Refco suffered $35 million of losses relating to the settlements and agreements we came to in 1997. Not mentioned is the offset provided by the value of all the assets turned over to them by me and my funds. Worse yet, just having my name linked with Refco is enough for 99.9% of the public to think that there is some substance to the idea that unbeknownst to me they hid their losses with me, and that somehow this morphed into massive losses and debts that killed the firm eight years later." I believe VN over Refco, his version is sounder than someone using Refco as their own $1 billion dollar ATM, liars continue attacking VN, a special place awaits jerks like that! http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/funds/supermodels/10249654.html
I think this article on the TheStreet along with Victor's Daily Speculations finally will answer the original Op-Ed post, "How did Victor Lose his Capital?". His version makes sense, I know someone who was there when George Soros got mutilated on his Futures Contracts, a first hand version said the Pit stood back and allowed price to fall so deep, they dug in and made a fortune off Soros bad trade. " 'The Worst Situation Imaginable' On Oct. 27, 1997, the stock market closed at 3:30 p.m. for the first time in modern history on a "circuit-breaker" rule due to sharp losses. The situation was unprecedented and chaotic. No one knew the proper way to price relatively illiquid derivatives. Niederhoffer received a margin call that afternoon. Refco told him that prior arrangements were no longer in force because of uncertainty over how their authorities would calculate their own liquidity. Refco wanted cash from Niederhoffer to serve as a buffer from further market losses. The next day, Niederhoffer said he thought he could get out of his positions successfully, but because of setbacks in Thailand he could not produce liquid collateral. Despite 15 years of working together through similar problems, he said Refco proposed that it resolve the situation by trading his fund's positions for their own account and transform some of them into cash. He reluctantly agreed. In a flash, Niederhoffer was out of business. As you might expect, Niederhoffer contends that if Refco had just held on to his positions a few hours longer, they would have become very profitable, as the market rallied violently that afternoon. But he recognizes that the company believed it could not take the chance that the position would go the other way, leaving it exposed to the danger of being out of compliance with capital requirements. "I requested that I be given time to liquidate in an orderly way so we'd both be better off, but they had their own agenda to make sure the thing didn't snowball," Niederhoffer says. "It was the worst situation imaginable." (Page 3) http://www.thestreet.com/story/10249654/3/a-hedge-fund-meltdown.html