Trade Like a Hedge Fund: 20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies and Techniques to Winning Profits

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.

I am always looking for new ways to build my skills in trading. The author does a good job of laying out some valuable strategies for when and why to enter and exit the market.

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.

I like the author. He is a go-getter.

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.

Strategies are for STOCK traders only. There are no futures or Forex ideas presented, although some of the ideas can transfer over. Decent if you are looking for general ideas of other ways to trade profitably. IMPORTANT: ALWAYS test any ideas you see on YOUR platform with YOUR data and VERIFY the system actually works the way the author says. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen an idea the author says makes decent $$ only to test it myself to find out that it doesn't work as stated if the author follows his/her own rules! Good luck!

I have been developing trading systems for 5 years and this book has many intesting ideas. I checked most of them out with my data and started trading with some. I think it is a great book for someone who is interested with system development and needs new ideas.

There is no bankruptcy bounce. In chapter 3 of his book, James gives a half dozen cases where a stock did bounce after declaring bankruptcy, but generally speaking this does not seem to be the case. A more recent survey of O&G bankruptcies found that almost all headed down from the first open following bankruptcy news. Detail here: [...]

skipp the whole book and just read technique 20