[.uk] Trade Like a Hedge Fund: 20 Successful Uncorrelated ...

Simplistic like a Childs Toy = Trade Like a Hedge Fund:
I should have known better, after buying and reading 50 or so books related to trading, the title should have given me pause for thought before purchase. No hedge fund trades like this (with the exception of trend following but certainly not with the proposed strategy) Give me a break. The worst $40 I've spent in a long time. Don't waste your time or money

Focused Strategies for Gaming Institutions and Retail:
This is not a book about how to pick the next MSFT, or how to be a master of the Universe. It outlines several strategies by which traders can make money from 1. Panic 2. Slippage as the result of institutional biases There is not a lot of detail about risk management, back testing crietria, optimized bet sizes etc. - the author dismisses a lot of The Street's "curve fitting" and over-rationalization through numbers. The basics of how to run your own book - that is for you to figure out. What this book does is demonstrate how one trader - who makes a living from it - thinks and tries to game his opponents. As for the opinion that Mr. Altucher is not running a hugely successful fund (in AUM terms), that seems to be the case. But then again, he seems more intent on being an asset MANAGER, rather than an asset ACQUIRER, which is what most >$5bn HFs are now. Give this book a read - it will give you IDEAS, not a roadmap.

Careful!:
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.

Primer for You Creativity:
I thought the trading examples and strategies were creative and well explained. It might not be completely appropriate to take these "trading systems" and use them as-is directly in your trading, but they certainly are a good primer to get you thinking of creative ways to find and exploit market inefficiecies and tendencies. The stock market is not completely random, which is why I think these "panic" and other stategies have merit. You've got to think up you're own trading stategies to fit your personality and strengths and I think this book is a good start towards that objective. I've used my own adaptation of the QQQQ crash system and it has worked well. The only thing I wished the book covered more was maybe a short rebuttal chapter to those who would suggest that this is all data mining, which I don't believe it is. This is a unique book and one that is worth reading.

Awesome "cookbook":
This is a great book easy to understand and follow. James is fun to read...he takes you by the hand and leads you on how to buy stocks....