Friday Feature Book Review: The Education of a Speculator by Victor Niederhoffer (ex George Soros Trader) "金融市場投機家の教育": ビクター ニーダホッファ（元ソロスのトレーダー)

Any trader who is so good, he worked for George Soros, must have something special. Victor Niederhoffer, was that man, and he was certainly something, and still is. Not only did he go to Harvard and get his PhD at the University of Chicago, he was a 5 time US National squash champion, board game lover, horse racing enthusiast, and music fan. He is pretty complex due to his New York upbringing in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. 

With a father who was a cop & squash player, and an uncle who liked to buy & sell stocks, a lot of influences came to make up Victor's personality. Why does a trader who takes risk for a living with USD100Million or more, not wear any shoes in his office? Why does he keep pictures of the Titanic in his trading room and reminders of great men having great failures? Why does George Soros nick-name him looser? There is another image of him at the beach with george. Victor is out in the waves and George is closer to shore in a safe zone. A large wave is about to come crashing down onto Victor. It represents 2 different views on when market waves are safe to trade in. You soon have more questions about him than the money he makes by trading for others.

This book was written during a shining highlight peak of his trading career, well before any Titanic sized trading loss that was to come later on. This book is a self written explanation of how could he have got to his trading role and risk taking success. It is not a simple system that he developed, or an edge that he uses against a market. It is an entire process of thought. He is a great speculator because he is great at cross pollination of his many influences.

In many ways, his education comes from observations made in one area, and then applying them into a very new totally different unrelated area. How can you combine championship squash play strategies to price reactions from a US Fed announcement on interest rates? How do you make clear correlations between how bookies size up horses at the race track, and also see stock prices move in a very similar way to a keen trained eye? You do so in a very unique way. The amazing thing you learn in this book is that a speculator can become great by using any combination of disciplines but only if all are well observed.

This is not a light read. In fact, I would call it intense reading, You need a few moments to fully absorb what you take in. It reminds me of sipping fine cognac. This book is not something you go through fast, just like how you do not guzzle down XO cognac. You take is small amounts, and savor them. That is how best to fully appreciate this well written explanation of a great trader's personal roots, trials and tribulations. This 414 page testament to a 360 overview of influence, was a National Bestseller, and deservedly so.

The Top 3 Takeaways from this book that really impact any reader are:

1) There is a lot to learn about how to be a long-term successful trader, and no one path will do. The more paths you can take, the better. There is no single way, there are many, so learn them all.

2) The best traders know how to make money and keep doing what they do best by observing trends and possible patterns. Squash or any other sport keeps the mind sharp when in competition.

3) When becoming a successful trader, other similar disciplines may be obvious to learn from. Horse racing tracks that "bet on the ponies" can be a great insight into how horse betting crowds react like investors in the markets.

The most sad reality of this book though, is that it came out in 1997, just before a great fall. Like the Titanic image kept to balance human hubris in his trading room, the fall in his risk taking did come and hit hard within 2 years. Going broke at such an age after such a high, is discouraging for anybody who admires & applauds, such amazing courage to win against the markets. Maybe the house does win in the end? Maybe George Soros was right, Victor was a loser in the end, or at least for a time, before he of course, started trading again. Like any Greek tragedy, the hero must suffer defeat, and hopefully rise again. This book reads like the revealing of a man's soul, the key to a unique and complex personality. An amazing book, highly recommended!

Please visit us for our Friday Feature Review where TMJ Partners will review books, movies, conferences and anything else with a financial theme. Follow us now for our free weekly updates, just click here. Thank you for reading and learning more about how money is made in finance! 

If you are interested in Sales & Trading, Banking or FinTech focused roles in Asia or Japan then click here. Follow TMJ Partners on Linkedin Instagram or Twitter. We are the world's #1 recruiter on Twitter, with over 40,000+ followers globally! click here! 

あなたがアジアや日本のセールストレーディング,
バンキング、フィンテックの役割に興味がある場合は、こちらをクリックしてください。ティエムジェィパートナーズをLinkedin Instagram またはTwitterでフォローしてください！ 世界中のTwitterで第1位のリクルーター、40,000以上のフォロワーを既に持っています！クリックしてください。

For more Buy-Side and Sell-Side roles in Asia-Pacific, contact our TMJ Partners Japan & Asia Finance team.
Tokyo                                          Tokyo

      Mark  Pink                               Shinichi Nagasawa
Direct + 81 3 3505 3891              Direct + 81 3 3505 3891

Friday Feature Book Review: RICHISTAN by Robert Frank (America's New Rich) ザ・ニューリッチ―アメリカ新富裕層の知られざる実態: ロバートフランク

The new global home of Ultra High Net Worth Individuals is now called Richistan, a curious new term. Many have done well in the post Lehman financial crisis. The 1% of wealthy citizens known as Richistanis, are living in Richistan places including Singapore, London or New York, and are all spreading. There were 3.7 million US millionaire households in 1995, 9 million in 2004, and more than 15 million as of 2014. The 1% varies is size depending on the state you reside in within the USA. In Connecticut, you need over US$620K of income, but in New Mexico, it is less than US$300K. This book explains how this new segment of society enjoys their lives. 

Author Robert Frank, takes us on a very vivid journey that paints a very clear picture. He gives a great account of how these new families start out, and upgrade to levels of daily consumption that have never been seen. Lower Richistan have families in the US$1-10M in wealth, with a primary residence of $810K. Middle Richistan has $10-100M in wealth and a primary residence of $3.8M. Upper Richistan is the $100M crowd with a residence of $16.2M. 

It seems there is always another level of wealth to aspire to, and services that the rich want that soon become a need. The great mind candy that I enjoyed most, explained how a single mother developed a butler school. It was aimed at these Richistani families, and grew well beyond her early expectations. It turned out to be a real need and niche market. You learn that beach homes in the Hamptons in summer, or ski chalets in Aspen in winter, need to be better served in Richistan. Good help is indeed, hard to find.

There are many other entrepreneurs featured like Tim Blixseth who started Yellowstone Club. It is a gated private community resort in the rocky mountains of Montana. Ed Bazinet made more than $250 million from the sale of his ceramic mini-village items, and now tries to focus on how to spend his cash on a new Gulfstream jet and modern art collection. Small hobby experiments can grow into very big businesses when the market timing is perfect. Any person can make a lot of money from any idea when the timing presents itself. Who these entrepreneurs are, and how much money they make, is a guilty addiction and deep fascination for myself. These stories of going from nothing to something, represent the American dream in many ways.

The Top 3 Takeaways from this book that really impact any reader are:

1) There is a lot to learn about how to be rich and successful in any society. You have to learn about the key market factors, and adapt to them constantly. Small ideas can grow into big businesses fast.

2) The best entrepreneurs know how to make money and keep doing what they do best. It is in their DNA and never turns off. You need to maximize the power of your ideas or inspirations with all business opportunities.

3) Becoming a successful entrepreneur, follows no pattern. It is the personal drive that is the common pattern, but not the business itself. The determination needs to be at the core. 

The most encouraging pattern though is that there often is none. Money can be made from almost any business by a very driven entrepreneur. Once there, the goal is to find the right residence in Richistan, and try and settle down. It does not come naturally for them, and they often find themselves starting a new business opportunity. Settling down is not in their DNA. That may be the most common thing among these Richistanis. This is a great luxury read that is inspirational, and well worth a weekend!  

Please visit us for our Friday Feature Review where TMJ Partners will review books, movies, conferences and anything else with a financial theme. Follow us now for our free weekly updates, just click here. Thank you for reading and learning more about how money is made in finance! 

If you are interested in Sales & Trading, Banking or FinTech focused roles in Asia or Japan then click here. Follow TMJ Partners on Linkedin Instagram or Twitter. We are the world's #1 recruiter on Twitter, with over 40,000+ followers globally! click here! 

あなたがアジアや日本のセールストレーディング,
バンキング、フィンテックの役割に興味がある場合は、こちらをクリックしてください。ティエムジェィパートナーズをLinkedin Instagram またはTwitterでフォローしてください！ 世界中のTwitterで第1位のリクルーター、40,000以上のフォロワーを既に持っています！クリックしてください。

For more Buy-Side and Sell-Side roles in Asia-Pacific, contact our TMJ Partners Japan & Asia Finance team.
Tokyo                                          Tokyo

      Mark  Pink                               Shinichi Nagasawa
Direct + 81 3 3505 3891              Direct + 81 3 3505 3891

Friday Feature Book Review: Black Edge Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar ブラックエッジ ――資産１兆円の男、スティーブ・コーエン物語 (ウィザードブックシリーズ)

How do you become a Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager? What path have others taken to get to that point? The story of Steven A Cohen, and the growth of SAC  & Point72, is an amazing one. Information is key, and there are levels of it, but talent is also needed. There are many things to learn from his financial career experience. The more you learn about him, the more you see how he is very similar to Bobby Axelrod in Billions. However, you also learn how they are very different. One may be an inspiration for the other, but they are not clones. In no way are they at all interchangeable. Both are clearly different people.

Black Edge is a term meaning top grade information about a stock or an investment that is a pure money maker in the right hands. However, it is also often illegal. Grey Edge is a term for information that is not public but could be found out by indirect means, and often still legal usually. White Edge is information that is in the public domain, and generally legal, however how you put it together can be very useful and never before figured out. It is often a story behind the numbers that bright people can figure out.

Who is Steven A. Cohen? and why was he at the center of a major investigation? In an industry driven by information, SAC was just one of many hedge funds looking for an edge, an information edge to make more money from trades. Where is the line of legal vs illegal? This is really at the heart of the story. 

There are many great details discovered around the hedge fund industry and the people in them. A lot of facts were gathered clearly. The author however, was an analyst at a hedge fund, and this comes out in how clear and well written many of the stories and people are in this book. It is not just a great story, it is really well written as a book, and that makes the story that more more impressive.

What I learned the most about Steven A. Cohen was how clearly talented was from a youth. He was driven as a kid, perhaps being one many kids, forces you to stand out. He grew up OK, but had wealthy grandparents, and always tried to do better than all around him. He wanted to escape his roots, and move up in the world early on. It seems this was how he approached many things in his life. There was often a goal, and that goal was about making money to leverage it into a better life in finance.

The biggest surprise for me though was the natural talent that he had with observing price movements. Reading the ticker tape was a deep seeded talent that allowed him to see price action like few around him. It set him apart because he studied stock prices in newspapers early, and had a natural comfort with how prices would move and could recognize patterns. The only other person I have read similar abilities about was the legendary short seller Jesse Livermore, the boy plunger. He made a US$100M+ fortune by selling America short in 1929. That is quite a benchmark and makes for a billionaire level of talent in this day and age.

The Top 3 Takeaways from this book that impact any reader are:

1) Even the biggest hedge fund players who reach Billionaire level wealth, often start middle class with a very deep seeded desire to succeed from an early age.

2) The ability to make money in the markets is a clear skill. However, being smart in financial markets does not mean you are smart in all parts of life. Emotional decisions on a spouse can be poorly made for odd reasons.

3) Becoming a successful money manager brings capital, that forces you to change and evolve. The more capital you run, the more difficult it gets to maintain high returns. You have the change and mature your approach over time if you want to run major money in size.

The book is full of many details that cannot be covered in this review. The author Sheelah Kolhatkar, is a former hedge fund analyst herself. This really comes across with the understanding and level of detail that I really loved. What made the book enjoyable and easy to read though, was the quality of writing. The writing itself is smooth and engaging, always high in style and quality. This was very deeply researched and the details on the FBI agents and their motivations are excellent. In fact, all of the hedge fund ecosystem participants are really well described in motivation and background. You can recognize others like them and common themes right away. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to seek out answers about hedge funds on a global scale.

Please visit us for our Friday Feature Review where TMJ Partners will review books, movies, conferences and anything else with a financial theme. Follow us now for our free weekly updates, just click here. Thank you for reading and learning more about how money is made in finance! 

If you are interested in Sales & Trading, Banking or FinTech focused roles in Asia or Japan then click here. Follow TMJ Partners on Linkedin Instagram or Twitter. We are the world's #1 recruiter on Twitter, with over 40,000+ followers globally! click here! 

あなたがアジアや日本のセールストレーディング,
バンキング、フィンテックの役割に興味がある場合は、こちらをクリックしてください。ティエムジェィパートナーズをLinkedin Instagram またはTwitterでフォローしてください！ 世界中のTwitterで第1位のリクルーター、40,000以上のフォロワーを既に持っています！クリックしてください。

For more Buy-Side and Sell-Side roles in Asia-Pacific, contact our TMJ Partners Japan & Asia Finance team.
Tokyo                                          Tokyo

      Mark  Pink                               Shinichi Nagasawa
Direct + 81 3 3505 3891              Direct + 81 3 3505 3891

Friday Feature Book Review: "The Buy Side" : Turney Duff バイサイド : ターニー ダフ (ニューヨークヘッジファンドのインサイダーストーリー)

It is all about the money. This book is a buy side voyeur's guilty pleasure. The end game for many on Wall Street, is to end up "on the buy side". It is where the asset size is huge and the people running that big pile of cash, make a nice pile for themselves. That is the myth, the fantasy. Luckily, some have lived it, and seen it from the inside. This is one such story. 

All grass is greener on the other side of the fence, at least in theory. The reality is often less green or clean. Before Lehman Shock, "the white house" was known as a New York luxury apartment full of big money players with a lot of white cocaine. When buy side clients "ordered in", it often was for high end exotic escorts. This is a true life story about sex, drugs, stress and money, all pursued to spectacular excess. 

Sometimes you fly too close to the sun. You have waxed feathers, they melt and you fall. That is this book's core story. It is a modern twist on the famous Greek fable. Turney Duff starts off in Morgan Stanley, after intros from his only family relative in finance. "Uncle Tucker" opens the door for him, and he walks into Wall Street. The book works, because Turney was a journalism graduate. The book's writing is really excellent, perfectly fitting into documentary style, and that makes all the difference.

Uncle Tucker trades in his Corvette for a Mercedes Benz. He does so due to commissions he earns from a top client, Ivan Boesky, and calls it the "Boesky Benz". Boesky later goes to jail for insider trading. In fact, it was his unique personality that was used as the core base for Gordon Gekko. Also known as Mr "greed is good" made famous on the big screen in the Charlie Sheen movie Wall Street in 1987. Finance is about connecting with people, not always numbers. The female MD at Morgan Stanley that hired him, had a common interest in a US TV drama "Melrose Place", and sure enough, he got his first opening into finance. Ultimately finance is about relationships, very personal relationships.

Our hero has no MBA, no economic views of any sort, just soft skills and a hunger. This is a personality that works well in a world of professionals that wants more. We learn that Turney Duff, is not like his father, not the hard working man from Kennebunk, Maine, who shovels snow in fluid motion. His father is a man who thinks life is "not full of short cuts". Yet young Turney tries his own path, and finds every short cut possible while enjoying more sex, drugs and porn than the average rock star. 

He marries a model, wants to be on the cover of GQ magazine in a Prada suit with Dolce & Gabbana jewelry. In the end, he finds out that his search is really empty. Like driving by a car accident, you want to look away, but you can't. It is too compelling. It is too real. All of the Wall Street client patronage rumors that you heard about are explained or rather confessed to, in amazingly candid "too real for TV" detail to ignore.

Reading all of the examples of excess is like gorging on a giant bag of potato chips, and 2 liters of Coke. Not a good thing, but it's so good then, that you cannot stop. His personal life story does not end well, but that is not the point. What you want out of this book is clear confirmation of "how it really was" in the middle of a possible insider trading shop like the now infamous Galleon hedge fund, whose founder is now serving 11 years in prison. 

The Top 3 Takeaways from this book that really impact any reader are:

1) There is a lot to learn about how to be successful buy side trader. You have to learn about the key market players, and adapt to them constantly.

2) The best buy side traders know how to make money and keep doing what they do best where they have an edge, hopefully legal. You need to recognize patterns and be consistent and keep a constant ability to adapt to trends, markets and changes.

3) Becoming a successful buy side trader, a true long-term moneymaker is never fast or easy. Short cuts catch up with you, and can lead to your downfall. A market diary always helps. The more trading notes you take, the more profits you make. 

If you want to read in glorious detail what world got him there, and about what the peak was like from "an insider" then this book is for you. You will learn during the go-go New York pre-Lehman years of 2002-2007, what took place and get your belly full of over-excess satisfaction. It really did happen, and every story you ever heard about the wild night side of Wall Street is documented in this very honest with no self pity confession. Warning: not to be shared with your grandmother in any book exchange. Highly recommended!

Please visit us for our Friday Feature Review where TMJ Partners will review books, movies, conferences and anything else with a financial theme. Follow us now for our free weekly updates, just click here. Thank you for reading and learning more about how money is made in finance! 

If you are interested in Sales & Trading, Banking or FinTech focused roles in Asia or Japan then click here. Follow TMJ Partners on Linkedin Instagram or Twitter. We are the world's #1 recruiter on Twitter, with over 40,000+ followers globally! click here! 

あなたがアジアや日本のセールストレーディング,
バンキング、フィンテックの役割に興味がある場合は、こちらをクリックしてください。ティエムジェィパートナーズをLinkedin Instagram またはTwitterでフォローしてください！ 世界中のTwitterで第1位のリクルーター、40,000以上のフォロワーを既に持っています！クリックしてください。

For more Buy-Side and Sell-Side roles in Asia-Pacific, contact our TMJ Partners Japan & Asia Finance team.
Tokyo                                          Tokyo

      Mark  Pink                               Shinichi Nagasawa
Direct + 81 3 3505 3891              Direct + 81 3 3505 3891