Market Wizards

Business and economics

First published: 1993
Print length: 458 pagesHarperBusiness, 1993

Description

Jack D. Schwager interviews a group of exceptionally successful traders to discover how they operate in markets where most participants struggle. Rather than promoting one system, he asks each subject about formative losses, decisive trades, research methods, risk limits, discipline, and the psychological pressures of managing money. Their approaches range across different instruments and time horizons, and their explanations often contradict one another on tactics. Recurring principles nevertheless emerge: protect capital, recognize mistakes quickly, develop an approach suited to one’s temperament, and treat emotional control as part of the work. The interview format gives readers access not only to strategies but also to the habits of judgment through which professional traders confront uncertainty.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Technical

Pace

Moderate

Tone

Cerebral · Earnest · Reflective

Structure

Anthology · Episodic

Focus

Ideas · Information · Voice

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 3 / 5

Themes

AmbitionKnowledge and truthTransformationWealthWork

About Jack D. Schwager

Jack D. Schwager is a financial writer, fund manager, and specialist in futures and hedge funds whose books draw on extensive experience in market research and commodity-trading advisory work. He has written practical instruction, including Getting Started in Technical Analysis, but his characteristic method is the extended interview. In the Market Wizards books and Stock Market Wizards, he questions accomplished traders about research, decisive trades, serious losses, discipline, psychology, and risk limits. By placing sharply different strategies and temperaments alongside one another, Schwager avoids presenting market success as the product of a universal formula. His recurring concern is how traders make sound decisions under uncertainty, particularly how they control losses and develop methods compatible with their own dispositions. What distinguishes his work is the combination of technical familiarity with a sustained interest in experience: markets appear not only as systems to be analyzed, but as demanding environments in which judgment, self-knowledge, and discipline are repeatedly tested.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: HarperBusiness
Language: English
ISBN: 9780887306105

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