Customer Reviews

Bulls, Bears, and Millionaires: War Stories of the Trading Life

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Koppel presents 20 traders and asks them thought provoking questions about what they learned about their profession and themselves. Any comparison between this book and the Market Wizards misses the point.Here the authors main interest is not specific trading strategies but rather the emotional and psychological aspects of being a first string performer.Also, many interesting philosophical insights that would serve one well in tading or in life.I felt the conversational tone to be very effective.

I found this book gave me a bird's eyer view of what it's like trading for short and intense market swings.Really good portrait of the lives of traders.

Bob Koppel illustrates in this wonderful book what it takes to be a succesful futures trader. From his experiences and through the interiews of top traders from all around the world, Koppel makes it clear what essential qualities need to be developed in order to achieve financial success. This book is also a very exciting and enjoyable book to read. Koppel puts you in the position of trading multi-million dollar positions before key government repots. These experiences will help you be able to deal with them more effectively when they do occur in your trading carear.

Arlen Ginsburg, Independent Futures Trader

Dont know whether Koppel had set the wrong questions or not, or he simply tried to gain quantity over quality (19 respondents in 190 pages), the answers from those 19 respondents, and thus the book itself, had been very boring and superficial. It's not that the 2 books of Market Wizards had set so high a standard for these interview type of trading books, but this one is just so poorly written. I had not read Koppel's other books but this one had scared me away.

A poorly put togeather book with facile interviews. Jack Schwager's Market Wizards books have set a new standard for this type of book. Koppel has missed the boat again. Sloppy.

A Market Wizards style of book interviewing various floor traders, fund managers and commodities traders. Maybe I'm not that informed, but the only one of the people were interviewed was Toby Crabel. Koppel asks the exact same question to every single person with a whole array of varying answers. To sum it up, nearly everyone had early success, blown out their account, and then recovered. The revolving theme seems to be that traders need to be competitive, disciplined and have almost an obsessive drive to find a way to make it.

I did find the reading to be a little more interesting near the end with some more insightful interviews. Overall, there is too much chatting and very much talk about trading. Therefore, a reader would not expect to find anything all that useful to apply to his own methods.

Great sleeping aid.

The best book todate about what makes traders tick.It is an amazing look into the minds and hearts of the worlds best traders.Anyone who does not appreciate the profound insight this book offers just doesn'tget it!

Koppel interviews over 20 traders, with plenty of questions on his usual topics of mental attitude, discipline etc. There are also a couple of tips about short-term trading which I, as a day-trader, found useful. Unfortunately the book has several flaws: i) the interviews are too short, lightweight, and chatty; they focus too much on the people/lifestyle and not enough on the trading. The insight and depth of analysis which made Jack Schwager's "Market Wizards" so informative is sadly lacking. ii) Koppel concentrates too much on short-term trading - there is almost no discussion of techniques for medium and long-term trading. iii) The material is repetitive. Many of the traders give similar advice and answers. iv) Few, if any, of the traders interviewed have any genuinely new or powerful insights, and many come across as superficial and rather self-congratulatory. In summary, this book is useful for someone interested in day-trading, especially on the floor of the CME or CBOT. For those with a longer-term horizon, or for quant traders, this book will contain little of interest.

Not worth reading it. Not worth even talking about it. Nothing interesting said about trading. Just irrelevant personal questions and grandious self-serving answers from some traders in need of popularity.

This is the first time i ordered something from Amazon.com, the book has arrived much quicker than I expected, great service,and the book is new as they claimed, i definitely will use amazon again for online shopping,thanks.