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One of the great tours de force of investing literature, a must for any serious investor's library. -Barron's <br> With an original mind and an eclectic approach, Victor Niederhoffer takes the reader from Brighton Beach to Wall Street, visiting all stops of interest along the way. What emerges is a book full of insights, useful to the professional and layman alike. -George Soros, Principal Investment Advisor, The Quantum Fund <br> . . . a compelling and an entertaining read. -The Wall Street Journal <br> The Education of a Speculator is the first meaningful book on speculating. Successful speculating is as fine an art as chess, checkers, fishing, poker, tennis, painting, and music. Niederhoffer brings forth the best from each of these fields and shows the investor how their principles can enrich one's life and net worth. -Martin Edelston, President, Boardroom Inc., publishers of Boardroom Classics & Bottom Line/Personal <br> The Education of a Speculator offers ple

One of the great tours de force of investing literature, a must for any serious investor's library. -Barron's With an original mind and an eclectic approach, Victor Niederhoffer takes the reader from Brighton Beach to Wall Street, visiting all stops of interest along the way. What emerges is a book full of insights, useful to the professional and layman alike. -George Soros, Principal Investment Advisor, The Quantum Fund . . . a compelling and an entertaining read. -The Wall Street Journal The Education of a Speculator is the first meaningful book on speculating. Successful speculating is as fine an art as chess, checkers, fishing, poker, tennis, painting, and music. Niederhoffer brings forth the best from each of these fields and shows the investor how their principles can enrich one's life and net worth. -Martin Edelston, President, Boardroom Inc., publishers of Boardroom Classics & Bottom Line/Personal The Education of a Speculator offers plenty of insights into the way markets work, but the epiphanies are what a reader might expect from Lao-tzu rather than, say, Graham and Dodd. -Worth Magazine . . . Victor Niederhoffer gives us page after page of distilled investment wisdom. Taken together, this is pure nectar to those who aim for consistently superior stock-market performance. -Barron's

Offbeat reminiscences and observations from a Wall Street pro who appreciates that there's more to life than balance sheets, income statements, and price charts. A champion squash player as well as world-class investor (whose associates include the storied George Soros), Niederhoffer grew up in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach, a bustling Jewish enclave that had a perdurable influence on his values and viewpoints. While unwilling to share whatever real secrets he has for making money in futures or securities, the author offers a series of discursive takes on aspects of a secular-humanist version of the Great Chain of Being, which in the aggregate afford would-be speculators some guidance on playing the markets. In addition to reviewing cost-effective lessons on self-reliance learned from boyhood chums like the neighborhood bookie, Niederhoffer examines what, if anything, links board games (chess, checkers), casino gambling, horse racing, music, sex, sports, and the weather to the capital or commodities markets. The author (who earned a Ph.D. in economics) also delves into financial panics, crashes, cyclical shifts in market trends, and allied issues. Trader Vic even constructs a comprehensive ecology of markets in which- he credibly equates fixed-income investors with herbivores, hedge funds with carnivores, and brokers with decomposers (bacteria, crows, et al.). In a concluding chapter, Niederhoffer manages to combine a graceful, heartfelt tribute to his late father with a clutch of antic advisories for those who aspire to quick killings in the market; a highlight of this potpourri is so-called LoBagolo analysis, a plausible surmise that suggests bears may trap bulls along the path that bore the latter upward in much the same way as African villagers snare itinerant elephants on the routes the herd invariably takes to and from its starting point. Edifying pieces of a lively mind whose education has been both broad and deep. (Kirkus Reviews)

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"VICTOR NIEDERHOFFER's storied career as a speculator spans more than twenty-five years. In the introduction to Practical Speculation, Vic describes the rollercoaster his hedge fund rode from No. 1 in 1996 to the debacle in 1997 that forced him to close his fund. Rather than giving up, he wrote this book ""figuring that by trying to teach others, I might learn something myself,"" apparently with some success. Niederhoffer was ranked No. 6 for the year 2003 among 200 managed futures hedge funds in the TASS database, and is No. 4 in the performance rankings through mid-2004. Niederhoffer is the author of the critically acclaimed Education of a Speculator as well as numerous groundbreaking academic articles about markets. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, he holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is a five-time national champion in squash and claimed the world title in 1976."

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