Customer Reviews

Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Trader

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I think some people here missed the point of this book altogether. There is no doubt that this is one of the best trading books ever written. This book ranks among the top trading books ever including Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, not because of the technical trading secrets it revels, but because of the insights it offers on the mindset of one of the greatest traders ever. This book elevates itself above almost every other trading or financial book out there for that exact reason, the author made his living (and it was a very good living) from trading the markets. He didn't have a website that offered trading ideas for fifty bucks a month. He didn't fly around the country giving seminars on how to trade at a thousand bucks a head. He didn't have a radio program where he would solicit money from listeners and call himself a money manger. He trading his own money and made a fortune.

Marty started out with a hundred grand, but his seat on the AMEX cost him ninety thousand dollars, so he was left with ten thousand dollars of trading capital. With only ten thousand dollars he made over eight grand on his first trade. In his second year of trading he made six hundred thousand dollars, and in this third year he made 1.2 million. Unbelievable!

The book is full of insights into how Marty spent all of his money, which can become a little uninteresting, but the rest of the book is pure gold. The last chapter of the book details (for lack of a better word) some of Marty's trading ideas, but that's not valuable information. The valuable trading insights are found throughout the context of the book. Much like Reminiscences of Stock Operator doesn't outline Jessie Livermore's trading strategies; however, it does give insights into how Jessie thought about the markets. Pit Bull is written in the same manner, in that, it doesn't outline Marty's strategies but offers insight into his mindset. For instance, at one point in the book Marty discusses how he likes to trade the S&P 500 futures. This information is just glanced over by ninety-five percent of people who read the book, but it is some of the most valuable information the book has to offer.

This book is underestimated because most people just see Marty Schwartz as a self absorbed, egomaniacal jerk. I'm not going to make a judgment on Marty's attitude; instead I'm going to say that this book does one thing: it offers insight into the mind of a great trader. Notice throughout the review I've been using the word trader. If you're unclear on the differences between traders and investors you probably won't like the book. If you're a trader, Pit Bull should definitely be part of your trading library.

"Pit Bull" is the trading memoir of Martin "Buzzy" Schwartz, multimillionaire stock and futures trader who won the "Champion Trader" title in the 1984 U.S. Trading Championship, the "Most Money Made" title in 1983, and conquered the futures division in 1992. He made a lot of money too, but Mr. Schwartz loves the limelight and a good competition. The book starts in 1979, when Schwartz abandoned his 9-year career as a securities analyst to trade his own money on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and progresses through his tumultuous, exciting trading career until the mid-1990s.

Schwartz sometimes digresses to relate incidents of his childhood and youth, illustrating that he was always a gambler by nature, so "Pit Bull" has some qualities of an autobiography. Schwartz' story is peppered with trading advice, and many of its best moments are when he describes his experiences during specific market events, such as his losses when the market surged after the 1980 presidential election, the idiosyncrasies of trading on the Merc, and October 1987's Black Monday and its aftermath. Martin Schwartz has a big personality and a frank sense of humor that keep the reader entertained. It seems he was both a success and a failure, having succeeded in making himself quite wealthy but not always wealthy enough for his tastes. But he gives the impression that he enjoys trading immensely most of the time.

"Pit Bull" concludes with "The Pit Bull's Guide to Successful Trading" in 30 pages, for those seeking insight into Martin Schwartz' success on the markets. It's a pretty handy guide in which Schwartz lists the trading tools and market analysis services that he uses, outlines his techniques for using moving averages and some chart patterns, and summarizes how he plays stocks and futures. That's followed by a description of "My Typical Day". "Pit Bull" is fun, I instructional, and easy to read. I was surprised that Mr. Schwartz sometimes tries to anticipate -or bet against- the market instead of following it. But sometimes he got burned. No surprise there.

Pit Bull gives a good and entertaining insight into the mind of a Market Wizard. "Buzzy's" book makes you sometimes laugh out loud.

Particularly interesting; anyone who considers managing other peoples money should read this book. Buzzy shows the dark side of this business and how negatively it can affect the money manager.

Don't expect another Remiscence of a Stock Operator, for that Pit Bull lacks depts on the psychology of a trader and focuses mainly on short term trading (the author is basically a scalper).

All in all a worth-reading book on the life of a top trader.

Pit Bull is a very entertaining book about a real trader. So far I have never read a book I didn't like that was actually written by a real trader. As opposed to someone who does "research" or just writes a market letter or better yet a trading coach. If you can get past his massive ego you can really learn tons and be entertained all at the same time. He says many times in the book that he liked selling his favorite commodity: which was Martin Schwartz.

It wasn't surprising to me that he never made money trading until Audrey (his wife) told him to make a plan. He never had a plan to make money and he never did until his wife told him to. The second thing I learned from this book is how he has a lot of self-confidence in himself which is a nice way to say that he has a big ego. But the bottom line was that he knew that he could make money because he had a plan and worked hard to achieve it. Another tidbit learned was that he was always prepared for the market and on days in which he wasn't he didn't trade well. The bottom line is if you are looking for the same indicators, ratios, or methods that he uses this book won't teach you that. We probably wouldn't even make money off them even if he spelled them out for us. The real secret is the attitude and the other stuff that so many traders don't do or take for granted. He took notes on the market and recorded them so he could refer back to his feelings and learn from his mistakes to be a better trader. These types of things are the real secret but most people want to look for the magic indicator that will take them to the promised land.

If you want to look inside the mind of a real trader and want to be entertained at the same time you should buy this book.

This refers to the audio tape version:

This high rolling story was great fun. It's refreshing to hear a tape actually read by the author - it makes the story so much more alive. I found myself sitting in my car for a few extra minutes whenever I got to where I was going just so I could find out what happened next. I bought the abridged version of the audio tape but now wish I bought the longer tapes.

Highly recommended if you enjoy trading stories.

By turns humorous, vulgar, scatological and even touching, I found that I learned more about the author and his love for his wife that I did about trading. An interesting read, but don't expect to learn much about how to trade the markets from the book.

I appreciated reading the end of each chapter where Buzzy discussed what he had learned in a philosophical way. Great book because it mixes it all up, gives some history, some psychology, quite a bit of schmaltz, and insight into how chaotic trading can be. Not a "how-to" book but an honest, humorous look inside a great trader's inner workings.

I had to give this book 5 stars. It is so entertaining at times I was laughing and other times introspective...just like the author.

Buzzy Schwartz must be considered one of the greatest traders of our time and this book is more of an autobiography than a trading manual. He never divulges his trading methodology nor how he turned from being a mediocre break even trader to the star he became.

He references various indicators he uses but with no explanations and curiously credits Terry Laundry's T theory for his turnaround because " it went back to who I was as a person ". The T Theory is then left to you to figure out (Which I can't).

The best thing I can say about his methodology is that it is uniquely his. All of us need to find what best fits our trading style and apply it...there is no one size fits all in trading.

Towards the end of the book it becomes very clear that Buzzy has become weary of the toll that trading has taken on his life ( he wound up in the hospital and almost died) yet still can't seem to get the trading bug out of his system ( he places a trade while in the doctors office).

All in all one of my favorite books, not for its trading methods but for its entertainment value.

This is an entertaining, quick read, that is if you can get past the author's monumental egomania. Actually, most great traders are very humble, because the markets will teach you humility constantly. So then, how do we reconcile this discrepancy? Well, this book covers his trading during the decade of the '80s, when all you really needed to make money in the markets was a pulse and a Quotron machine. And one could make a great deal of money, if they were willing to put in 14-hour days, as Schwartz does. The fact that he once lost $800,000 on a trade by committing two of the cardinal sins of trading, trading against the trend, and adding to a losing position, and yet overall was a highly profitable trader, is evidence of how easy it was to trade in the '80s.

However, nowadays everyone with an Internet connection has access to real-time streaming quotes and direct access trading platforms. Consequently, trading is as hard as it has ever been, since instantaneous information is available to everyone, traders are competing with institutions, hedge funds, and thousands of other individual traders, and all of these people are using the same indicators. For example, Schwartz was making a killing in the S&P 500 futures because he discovered by using a Telerate monitor, he could position himself for the S&P open the next morning based on what interest rates were doing after the close of the bond futures. He was capitalizing on information other traders were not aware of, or had not made the connection. Those days are gone, as are the days when the equities market moved primarily based on interest rate moves.

Schwartz also tried to manage a hedge fund, but failed, and almost killed himself from the stress, ultimately having open heart surgery. His trading was based on scalping, which does not lend itself to trading with very large amounts of money, as is the case with hedge funds.

Although the book was published in 1998, the trades he discusses end in early 1991. It is not known if he was still a consistently profitable trader after 1991. This is not a book on how to trade, although he includes a section on how he trades at the end of the book. He mainly used 10-period exponential moving averages, channel lines, and various indicators such as stochastics, tick, trin, and opinions from various newsletters and other traders. These tools now seem simplistic, at least in my opinion and experience.

On a final note, check out the photo of Schwartz in the dust jacket; is it my imagination, or is he an absolute dead ringer for Michael Eisner?

Marty Schwartz is a great trader, no doubt about it. Is he a legendary trader? No. Is he a champion trader? Yes. But how many trading contest winners do you know that have gone on to succesfully manage OPM as "Buzzy" likes to refer to it. Contests and real life have nothing in common with each other. How many of us have paper traded with good results only to find ourselves losing in "real-time". Schwartz is too arrogant. He claims to have out-traded George Soros, what nonsense!! George can crush him with a mere bat of an eyelash. Buzzy is a great trader for himself, but when it comes to OPM (other people's money), forget about it. No scalper is going to make money trading in huge size. Unless they are on the floor or they are Monroe Trout. The strategy section in the book is very thin. There are a few interesting tidbits, such as mid-month buying and so on, but nothing that will really help you in your trading. An amusing read overall. However, Schwartz really needs to get over himself, he is a great trader, but he should never make comparisons with himself and the "big boys"; he just ends up looking stupid.