Successful Traders

Brian Gelber: Broker Turned Trader

• Now, I know the characteristics of various institutions. Let’s take CitiBank. Back then, I was buying because they were buying. Now, if Citi was buying, I might conclude that they were just reallocating their assets or changing the duration of their portfolio. Today, I have little regard for the views of portfolio managers, because their outlook tends to cover a much longer time perspective than mine. I didn’t understand that back then.

Bruce Kovner: the World Trader

• Harvard graduate >> Professor in political science at Harvard and UPenn >> Trader in the interbank currency and futures markets. << influenced by Michael Marcus, who told him that “you have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it.”

Dr. Van K. Tharp: The Psychology of Trading

• Three major clusters important to investment success: psychological factor, the management and discipline factor, and the decision-making factor.

Ed Seykota: Everybody Gets What They Want

• EE from MIT>> developed the first large-scale commercial computerized trend-following trading system. I used an exponential averaging method because it was easier to calculate and computational errors tended to disappear over time.