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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, informative, scrumptious, March 1, 2001
This is a quick read, as breezy as the sports page and as agreeable as a six-figure income before you're thirty. But beware. Underneath the adrenaline rush lie material angst and emotional depression. After reading this you may take a certain delight in writing yet another line of boring code or in picking up that phone and punching in the numbers as you puff yourself up for a cheery hello. You might even walk outside and admire the scenery, realizing that perhaps day trading is its own peculiar hell, the kind of thing the gods do to you when they grant your dearest wish.On the other hand this book might psyche you up to take the plunge or recharge you enough to catch the open tomorrow morning. If so--if you hear the siren call of the market or feel that passion for action--then this is a good book to read for what you can learn about how some day traders buy and sell. (They will be part of your competition.) There's a lot of insight here into what works and what doesn't work, or I should caution, what worked and what didn't work. It's clear that what day traders like Anuff do is follow the trend while working very hard to find a way to (glory be!) ANTICIPATE the trend. The incidental information on the significance of spreads, of just who you are playing against (add brokers and market makers to day traders) and how this passion may take over your life is perhaps the best of the book. Noteworthy is Anuff's description of the three-monitor layout and the software he used and the sites he visited while ensconced in his Frisco apartment glued to CNBC, whistling their theme song. Essentially "dumb money" is nonprofessional money. What Anuff learned in his experience as a day trader is that the market makers and the brokers and other professionals still have a big advantage. Although the playing field has leveled considerably in recent years, you still have the spread against you and your information is stale and second hand. Anuff says nothing about insider trading, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that it happens all the time. Note, if you will, prior to an earnings announcement, which direction the stock in question takes. Nine times out of ten the direction will anticipate the tenor of the announcement. If it sells off, you can be nearly certain that the news is not so good. If it inches up, you can bet that a rosy report will follow. How can this be? Could it be that insider knowledge leaked out ahead of time to selected individuals who traded accordingly, and that such action was in turn noted by market makers, brokers and others close to the scene who took advantage? Yes, it's against the law, but so is speeding on the freeway. Also not mentioned is the action ahead of a broker downgrade or upgrade. By the time you hear about it, the stock has already popped or taken a haircut. As poker players say, you're chasing. Anyway, Anuff, founder of Suck.com and Gary Wolf take us on a blitz tour of the day trader's world. They throw in a little painless history, share experiences, drop some Wall Street and Internet biz whiz names, spin some anecdotes, wax nostalgic and generally just lay wide open the human psyche of greed and fear so palpably that once or twice I had the urge to tell Anuff to go take a shower. They do this so well and with so much color and verve delivered in an apt tone of irreverence, that I promise you'll take delight. Some of the fun comes from chat room adventures at Silicon.com, Yahoo, etc., as the ragers tout, diss, pump and dump, and otherwise scream their lungs out trying to mislead a gullible public. You'll learn why day traders always close out their positions before the bell (rather than climb walls). You'll learn what you can do about the gap in the morning, which is close to nothing. (You can try bleary-eyed to rescue your position in the before-market session, but most likely it's too late.) You'll learn why after a breaking news story the market sometimes goes one way, hesitates and then goes the other. Anuff and Wolf explain on page 152 that some quick-fingered traders, anxious to beat the pack, initially misread the news. You'll learn why technical analysis, with its "resistence" and "support" levels, works, despite the fact that any fundamentalist can prove it's a voodoo science. The authors explain it on pages 147-149 as a "self-fulfilling prophecy" that people believe. They don't explain why fundamental analysis seldom works, even though it's real science, but I will. One, a fundamental analysis of a company's true value vis-a-vis the marketplace is usually too complex to get right; and two, a significant percentage of buyers and sellers trade on emotion, ensuring that psychological factors predominate in the short run. Yes, Virginia, in the long run fundamentals will out. But you know what John Maynard Keynes said about the long run. Here's my favorite bit of colorful writing from page 154. The authors are talking about a stock flying up in the after hours: "All the previous day's losses had been erased, and tomorrow the shorts--if there were any left--would be squeezed until their little piggy eyes popped out of their heads." Best joke: In a greedy moment Anuff has decided to hold a position overnight. "There are seventeen and a half hours between one day's close and the next day's open, and that is a long, long time to be on your knees, hands clenched tightly, looking up at your twenty-four-foot ceiling, praying that if there is a God, he isn't just."
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by Toni Turner
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