The Little Book of Market Wizards Lessons from the Greatest Traders

What differentiates the highly successful market practitioners—the Market Wizards—from ordinary traders? What traits do they share? What lessons can the average trader learn from those who achieved superior returns for decades while still maintaining strict risk control? Jack Schwager has spent the past 25 years interviewing the market legends in search of the answers—a quest chronicled in four prior Market Wizards volumes totaling nearly 2,000 pages.

In The Little Book of Market Wizards, Jack Schwager seeks to distill what he considers the essential lessons he learned in conducting nearly four dozen interviews with some of the world's best traders. The book delves into the mindset and processes of highly successful traders, providing insights that all traders should find helpful in improving their trading skills and results.

• Each chapter focuses on a specific theme essential to market success
• Describes how all market participants can benefit by incorporating the related traits, behaviors, and philosophies of the Market Wizards in their own trading
• Filled with compelling anecdotes that bring the trading messages to life, and direct quotes from the market greats that resonate with the wisdom born of experience and skill

Stepping clearly outside the narrow confines of most investment books, The Little Book of Market Wizards focuses on the value of understanding one's self within the context of successful investing.

JACK D. SCHWAGER is a recognized industry expert in futures and hedge funds and the author of a number of widely acclaimed financial books. He is currently a principal of PortfolioFit (portfoliofitadvisors.com), an advisory firm that specializes in constructing tailor-made futures and FX managed account portfolios for clients, and the co-portfolio manager for the ADM Investor Services Diversified Strategies Fund, a portfolio of futures and FX managed accounts. Mr. Schwager is also one of the founders of Fund Seeder (Fundseeder.com), a platform designed to find undiscovered trading talent worldwide and connect unknown successful traders with sources of investment capital.
Mr. Schwager is the inventor of the Jack Schwager Commodity Index (JSCI) family, a set of dynamically adjusted commodity indexes that incorporate spread structure, systematic inputs, and volatility-based risk adjustments. The indexes are scheduled to be launched in early 2014 in cooperation with Aquantum AG and UBS.
Mr. Schwager is perhaps best known for his best-selling series of interviews with the greatest hedge fund managers of the last three decades: Market Wizards (1989), The New Market Wizards (1992), Stock Market Wizards (2001), and Hedge Fund Market Wizards (2012). His latest book Market Sense and Nonsense, a compendium of investment misconceptions, was published in November 2012. He is also the author of the three-volume Schwager on Futures series and Getting Started in Technical Analysis. Mr. Schwager is a frequent seminar speaker and has lectured on a range of analytical topics including the characteristics of great traders, investment fallacies, hedge fund portfolios, managed accounts, technical analysis, and trading system evaluation.

Foreword (Peter Brandt)

Preface

Chapter 1: Failure is Not Predictive

Chapter 2: What is Not Important

Chapter 3: Trading Your Own Personality

Chapter 4: The Need for an Edge

Chapter 5: The Importance of Hard Work

Chapter 6: Good Trading Should Be Effortless

Chapter 7: The Worst of Times, The Best of Times

Chapter 8: Risk Management

Chapter 9: Discipline

Chapter 10: Independence

Chapter 11: Confidence

Chapter 12: Losing is Part of the Game

Chapter 13: Patience

Chapter 14: No Loyalty

Chapter 15: Size Matters

Chapter 16: Doing the Uncomfortable Thing

Chapter 17: Emotions and Trading

Chapter 18: Dynamic Versus Static Trading

Chapter 19: Market Response

Chapter 20: The Value of Mistakes

Chapter 21: Implementation versus Idea

Chapter 22: Off the Hook

Chapter 23: Love of the Endeavor

Appendix:  Options—Understanding the Basics¹

Notes

About the Author

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