Customer Reviews

Trade Like a Hedge Fund: 20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies and Techniques to Winning Profits (Wiley Trading)

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

James Altucher is a professional money manager and a contributor to TheStreet.com who has assembled a collection of "20 successful uncorrelated strategies and techniques" for trading the markets. His first book effort is one of the most practical trading guides I have encountered.

What sets "Trade Like a Hedge Fund" apart is that we don't have to take the author's word that these strategies are successful. Included in every chapter are the specific rules for each strategy and the tested trading results over the recent past. I particularly like the fact that he has tested the results across broad market indices and individual equities. For example, Altucher creates his own version of the famous "Turtle" trend- following system and tests it on the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ 100 stocks, and a basket of uncorrelated stocks. This very much helps display the robustness of the underlying trading concept.

Among the specific strategies disclosed and tested are a unique method for trading the spread between S&P and NASDAQ stocks; an intraday method for trading the Cumulative NYSE TICK; a short-term trading system that makes use of Bollinger Bands; a technique for allocating money to bonds; and a straightforward method for arbitraging preferred and common stock of companies.

Where I think this book is strongest is in illustrating how a professional hedge fund manager thinks about the markets. Many of the strategies are designed to take advantage of extremes in the market, where inefficiencies are most likely to be present due to traders' panic and overconfidence. Altucher's creativity in searching for these inefficiencies stimulates the reader to engage in a similar search. Reading the chapter on the NYSE TICK, for example, I soon developed my own promising variation on the author's strategy.

Are there weaknesses in the book? I found the text to be clearly written and well-illustrated with charts and tables. The systems were designed and tested with the Wealth Lab program, but the specific code for each of the systems is not included in the text. An exception is the pairs trading system, which is one of the most creative strategies in the book. The strategies are geared more for swing and intermediate-term trading than "day-trading", with the TICK system a notable exception. My sense is that creative researchers could adapt some of Altucher's ideas to shorter-term trading--particularly the pairs trading technique and the strategy for buying market "crashes".

Altogether, "Trade Like a Hedge Fund" belongs to a genre of books inspired by the work of Victor Niederhoffer (who Altucher acknowledges in his introduction). The focus is on scientifically-tested trading concepts, not discretionary, subjective ones. Where Altucher may differ from Niederhoffer is in his willingness to adapt traditional technical analysis tools (such as Bollinger Bands and gaps) to quant trading. As a matter of disclosure, let me say that I have corresponded with Altucher about his ideas, but this review was not solicited by him or his editor (who happens to be my editor as well). The best thing I can say about the text is that it has given me ideas for my own research and trading. I can't say that about many trading books.

Brett Steenbarger
www.brettsteenbarger.com

This is one of those rare books which are so thin, you can learn as much from their table of contents as from their actual contents. There are a number of things I didn't like about this book and its packaging, but I will only list two for brevities sake.

First, there are not "20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies". "Technique 19" is simply a list of what the author believes doesn't work. "Technique 20" is a reading list of books the author likes; there are probably hundreds of Wall Street listmanias listing the same books. The other 18 present absolutely nothing new or interesting, most of them are simply "buy the dip" strategies.

Second, this book should rather be called "Trade Like James Altucher", unless you believe there are no longer any hedge funds that have discretionary traders or are willing to use options and go short. There is almost nothing in this book with regards to real money or risk management either. I suppose no one would have bought with that title though.

This is the only good sentence in the entire book: "Table 3.1 shows some recent large bankruptcies that were liquid enough to trade after filing Technique [sic] 11" (p. 49).

But what disappoints me most about this book is not that it is content free, but that it wastes the time and money of those who really are interested in learning. This book, I speculate, was meant to exploit the members of TheStreet.com and its children. Like another reviewer said, my copy is available for burning. I recommend Perry Kaufman's book instead, it may be twice the pirce, but has a thousand times the content.

On it's surface this is a book about 20 specific trading systems. But if that is all you get from it, you probably missed the big picture I believe the author was trying to convey. Like every book, there is good and bad. My review will be in the same order.

In fact there are variations on most of the systems presented. I found some of the variations/systems to be interesting. I will be trading my own variations of his variations with my own money. Frankly I would not feel comfortable trading some of the systems presented and I will not. But those are my preferences and need not be yours. I am sure there is at least one system in the book that would suit your style. Given the potential profits the cost of the book is trivial.

Blindly following a system might make you money for the short to medium term. However the real strength I found in the book was to spur my imagination to modify his systems to suit myself, thereby turning them into my systems. Since they are now "mine", I am free to change them as conditions change going forward.

Now the downsides. First there is little in the book on money management. In some of his examples he uses 100% equity to put positions on. I doubt anyone in their right mind would ever consider doing this.

Continuing on the first downside there is little risk management expressed. For at least one of the strategies, you stay in until you make a profit or you eat your losses after 20 days. Staying in any position for 20 days should have you in a profit at some point, no matter why you entered it (making me wonder just how good the system is). But if the market never moved to your number in that time, it is likely you have lost quite a bit of money along the way. Yes you almost always win a relatively small amount, but when you lose, YOU LOSE BIG.

Even with the imperfections, I heartily recommend the book. However I do not recommend you follow it blindly. It is definitely not a beginners book. Before you trade these ideas, you really need some experience. You need to know how to manage your money and how to maintain some grace under fire. In other words if you aren't very disciplined you might end up paying a lot more to the markets than you paid for this book. But since you might be taking the other side of one of my trades....I won't be offended if you don't take my advice.

The strategies in this book are so pathetic it's laughable. After taking hours of my time to program them into my computer and backtest them, I now feel I know more about trading than the author. I have not found one strategy that works. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't expect to buy a book with profitable strategies, but I did expect some rigor in the test results and some useful ideas that I could use.

Many of these strategies will give you a trade once a month and he backtests them for 4 years. Some strategies you will get only 50 trades in the 4 years. Some of them were profitable from 1999-2003 but then stopped working. And some of them I just can't get anywhere close to his results. Don't forget the drawdowns, because he doesn't use stops so the drawdowns are huge. And if you try to add a stop then it is even worse.

For example, his simple bollinger strategy: buy when the low touches the lower BB with 20 day period and 2 stddev and then sell when it reaches the MA. This is so simple I was sure that I didn't mess up the programming.

Results:

His: 72% winning trades
Mine: 65%

His: 7% avg profit, -12% avg loss
Mine: total profits / total losses = 1.01

Mine: ROI is 0%

This strategy barely breaks even. Which is not surprising since it's way too simple. The others are just as bad. My favorite is buying a stock that just declared bankruptcy. This wonderful technique has only 6 trades! The author doesn't know anything about statistics and I can't believe he knows anything about trading either.

Don't waste your money on this book.

I backtested most of the strategies listed in this book going back over a much longer period than the author used and found that most of them either lost money or made tiny profits.

nb - This is not an investing book. It is a tool chest for traders looking to expand the number of high-probability, non-correlated opportunities they get every day.

As a trader, one of the hardest things to do is sit on your hands day after day after day waiting for your strategies to trigger. Mr. Altucher has put together a nice arsenal of ideas that has allowed me significantly increase the number and frequency of my positive-expectation trades.

One small gripe is the physical quality of the book itself: Some items on the charts cannot be seen due to low-contrast b&w printing. A few illustrations are fuzzy and the paper seems inexpensive.

If you already make a living trading your own account, this book can help you make a better living.

While I oversimplify, the book suggests a variety of strategies for buying into panic. The general suggestion is to 'buy bad news and sell immediately afterwards (less than a day).' Following are some of the most interesting:

1. Play gaps: buy down gaps or short the up gaps
2. Buy the weaker of the QQQQ-SPY pair
3. Buy bankruptcies after announcements
4. Use tick to identify selling panic, buy short term
5. Buy after QQQQ crashes
6. Playing end of quarter sell-offs

All the ideas are laid out in easy to test rules.

The author reveals several strategies for hedge funds or private investors to think about, but he wouldn't be revealing these ideas if the opportunities continued to exist today. Nevertheless, its helpful to understand the types of strategies that are considered by top investors like him and a glimpse into competitive business of hedge funds. Variations of the investment themes may lead one to new ideas or down the right path. I happened to follow up on his useful commments on wealth-lab.com and used it to back test data.

His writing style is clear and not arrogant. Similar to Jim Cramer in style, his primary focus is trading profits -- not math, academics, or philosophical issues. Easy to read and hard to put down.

Similar to the Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, the author is writing about his own trading experiences (and not others interviewed by J. Schwager) and reveals the dynamics and challenges of making money as a fund manager.

This book is like a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is quantitative finance not technical analysis. Floating in a wasteland of books about trading using technical analysis and supposed "insider" techniques, this book delivers what the others pretend to deliver validated trading techniques. Before purchasing another compendium about the latest "rocket science", check out this collection of situational trades that are tested (on a distressingly small(mostly 4 years)) data sample and proven to produce profits. Even with Altucher's minimalist writing style, I feel that he waxed too poetic about the nature of the causes behind the anomalies. After all, does it matter how they work if in fact they do? Lean on the observations and if you still feel compelled to divine a reason, go for it, just make sure that it doesn't interfere with your research.

Some of the systems have painful drawdowns and need additional tweaking or a strong constitution to make them work.

Some of the trading techniques were a little loose for my tastes suffering from a few flaws. Examples include too small of a sample size or the possibility that on occasion the number of trades take would exceed capital and therefore leaving a distorted return # (see technique 13 and think of LTCM or 9/11). Even with the flaws this book is a non-stop idea generator.

When I was on the board of a not-for-profit organization, I asked one of the major contributors for what amounted to a 25-fold increase in funding. He politely declined, telling me, "Stick to the meat and potatoes issues."

Well, "meat and potatoes" is what you get with Altucher's book. It's chock-full of techniques and mechanisms successful pro's use to earn ongoing, market-beating profits for their clients. From Page One, it's clear this is a no-nonsense read. Altucher doesn't waste the reader's time spewing self-aggrandizing war-stories, nor does he find himself mired in personal biases or widely-held market fantasies. Rather, he gets right down to the business of trading, taking a realistic, "whatever works" approach, including methods based in both counting (statistical analysis) and what is popularly referred to as "technical analysis." There is discussion of trading gaps, spreads and "the tick," moving averages and bands, and other lesser-known techniques including buying bankruptcies, taking advantage of option expiration day, and deletions from indexes. Each is clearly explained, using real-world examples, and all are augmented with very well done charts, graphs and data tables. Throughout, Altucher debunks a number of market myths and he kindly includes a short chapter on "what doesn't work."

Mind you, this book is more for seasoned investors than it is for rookies, though aspiring novices need not be discouraged from buying it and studying the techniques. It's about "trading," which is significantly different from longer-term, buy-and-hold "investing," and not to be confused with risky "day-trading." To make best use of the material, one should have a reasonable market vocabulary and it wouldn't hurt to have a few math skills, but if not, you'll still be able to make plenty of sense out of Altucher's plain speaking.

The principal criticism of "trading systems" is that once they're made known, they won't work anymore, or for very long thereafter. This is quite true. I've heard some say about Altucher's book, "Gee, how could he do this? Once the word's out, we won't be able to trade these again." Wrong. What Altucher offers is NOT a "no-brainer-get-rich-quick-doing-things-my-way" trading system designed to make the author rich by doing nothing more than selling books to the unsuspecting wannabe. If that's what you want, don't buy this book. What it is, and why you should buy this book, is a collection of proven professional techniques that, when applied thoughtfully and within reason, can over time help to make one a very successful trader.

That this book has been bundled with Niederhoffer's "Practical Speculation," and that Altucher mentions this and its predecessor "Education of a Speculator" first among all books in his reading list is telling. Niederhoffer has indeed written the Old and New Testaments of Market Speculation, and in "Trade Like a Hedge Fund," Altucher has written the Concordance. The bottom line? If you're a seasoned investor or an aspiring rookie, and you want to learn to be a successful trader, you can't afford not to own this book.