Product Description

Acclaim for The Education of a Speculator, a provocative and penetrating look into the mind, the soul, and the strategies of one of the most controversial traders of all time

"A compelling and an entertaining read." -The Wall Street Journal

"Victor Niederhoffer gives us page after page of distilled investment wisdom. Taken together, this is pure nectar to those who aim for consistently superior stock market performance." -Barron's

"The Education of a Speculator offers plenty of insights into the way markets work, but the epiphanies are what a reader might expect from Lao-tzu rather than, say, Graham and Dodd." -Worth magazine

"The Education of a Speculator is the first meaningful book on speculating. Successful speculating is as fine an art as chess, checkers, fishing, poker, tennis, painting, and music. Niederhoffer brings forth the best from each of these fields and shows the investor how their principles can enrich one's life and net worth." -Martin Edelston, President, Boardroom Inc., publishers of Boardroom Classics and Bottom Line/Personal

"With an original mind and an eclectic approach, Victor Niederhoffer takes the reader from Brighton Beach to Wall Street, visiting all stops of interest along the way. What emerges is a book full of insights, useful to the professional and layman alike." -George Soros, Principal Investment Advisor, The Quantum Fund

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #226495 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 444 pages

Amazon.com
What you typically hear about Victor Niederhoffer is that he trades for "the great Soros," that he doesn't wear shoes in his office, that the only newspaper he reads is the National Enquirer, and that a picture of the Titanic hangs in his office.

That's all true. But it's the logic behind the eccentricities that is the real story. The Education of a Speculator is a sojourn inside the one-of-a-kind mind of Victor Niederhoffer, a trader in commodities and a keen observer of life. He has trained himself to look at the world in a singular fashion: where the guy on the street sees opportunity, Niederhoffer has scoped out all the downsides and done the contrarian thinking necessary to turn a profit. Niederhoffer draws material from disciplines as varied as biology, music, cards, and sports. His book, written with humor and verve, offers readers a chance to see the world through his lenses. The result is a genuinely new perspective on life (unless you too happened to grow up a speculator). This is a terrific, rewarding book.

Amazon.com Exclusive
Read Amazon.com's feature on The Education of a Speculator, including an interview with Victor Niederhoffer.

From Publishers Weekly
Spiked with irreverent, often self-deprecating humor, this rambling memoir by the head of Niederhoffer Investments, a top-ranked Wall Street commodities trading firm, is entertaining, outspoken and sometimes maddening. Born in Brooklyn in 1943, the author, who grew up playing stoop ball, applies his street smarts to the art of speculation as he distills lessons from handball, chess, checkers, gambling, poker and also tennis, which he played while attending Harvard. National men's squash champion for 10 years, he retired from the game on principle after he was denied membership in athletic clubs that excluded Jews. Sketching an eclectic history of forecasting techniques from ancient Greece's Delphic oracle to the Federal Reserve, Niederhoffer extrapolates from weather predicting and handicapping horse races to estimating price movements, and draws strained if intriguing parallels among sex, music and speculation. Finally, he turns to ecology for an "ecosystem model" of futures and foreign-exchange markets. Although he lays out no comprehensive system, his book is full of unconventional advice on what and when to buy and sell.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Don't buy if you're looking for a daytrading book
This is just an autobiography filled with tons of boring information about Neidderhoffer. I really expected more. Some insight on how to come up with good ideas, something, anything. No delivery.

Don't waste your money
What a disappointment. The book barely qualifies as a book on speculation. Instead, it is a long winded, rambling account of the author's (non-investing) life; after page upon page devoted to a topic other than speculating/investing (e.g. sports) he attempts to draw some parallel between the subject in question (e.g. sports) and speculating/investing. All too often, the analogies/parallels are weak to non-existent. For a book supposedly dedicated to speculating, remarkably little of it actually deals with this topic. There can be no doubt the author has tremendous knowledge; he simply choses not to share it with his readers in this offering. Don't waste your money.

Useless rubbish
Meandering nonsense that tells the reader nothing about how to speculate in anything. The author claims it is in there but between the lines as he cannot give away his secrets. Well, he does not. A waste of money for someone wanting to learn how to trade.