Inside the Next Generation Market Wizards ft. Jack Schwager & George Coyle

[00:00:01] Jack

When you get down to systems that a single individual can do, reality is you may get returns that are good, you may get a definite edge. So, I’m not saying that can’t be done, but you’re not going to get the spectacular type of cumulative returns or spectacular return to risk numbers that typify the people that get chosen for Market Wizards books. The single systems just don’t deliver that type of profile on them and how good they are. So, it ends up being that most of the spectacular records, or in some cases all the ones we find, are discretionary traders. It’s not an accident.

[00:00:44] Intro

Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. In markets success doesn’t come from predicting what happens next, it comes from being prepared for what you can’t predict.

In each episode we go deep with some of the world’s most thoughtful minds in investing, economics, and beyond to understand how they think, how they prepare, and how they decide, and the experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no short-cuts, just real conversations to help you think better and invest with confidence.

[00:01:17] Moritz

Hello and welcome to the open Interest series on Top Traders Unplugged. I’m your host, Moritz Seibert and this is a special bonus episode today, away from our regular schedule. I’ll be speaking with Jack Schwager and George Coyle. And I’m quite excited about this because we’ll be chatting about their soon to be release Market Wizards book due out on June 9th. This new book, subtitled the Next Generation of Market Wizards, is number six in the series of Market Wizards books which started in 1989. Wow, can you believe it? That’s almost 40 years ago now.

So, Jack hardly needs an introduction for anyone in the investment world. Many, or maybe most traders have read and, like me, reread, multiple times, the Market Wizard’s books over the years because there are so many pearls of wisdom in there. But this is the first time Jack hasn’t written the book all by himself. For this series he’s joined by a co-author, namely George Coyle.

So, maybe with this as a short intro to our conversation today, Jack, I think you and I, we know each other since almost 20 years or so now. And George, you and I, we’ve also known each other for many years too. But I think it would be a help, George, if you could introduce yourself briefly, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up co-authoring this book together with Jack.

[00:02:37] George

Sure. Thanks, Moritz. So, the book has my whole story in detail, so I’ll stick to the high level here. You can read it in the book if you want to know the whole thing. But my background is really liquid alternatives, so long/short equity, hedge funds, macro strategy, systematic trading.

I was working for a family office designing trading systems. And a lot of the systems that I was designing weren’t doing what the simulation said they should. And I started to see that the things that were happening agreed with what I had heard from a lot of the former market wizards who were systematic and other traders. And this really led me on a quest for knowledge because I wanted to learn as much as I could to design better systems.

I did a lot of research, read a lot of books. I didn’t want to have to redo that research, so I wound up publishing papers. The first one was on Ed Seykota.

Then I did one that I called Principles of Great Traders, and it covered a lot of traders over a hundred years, I did Soros and several others. And with the Soros paper, I wound up sending it to a lot of people, and got to talk to a few people who knew him from the early days, and said that my research really hit the nail on the head, As a researcher, this was just great because I realized that what I was getting from public information was accurate.

So, one of the traders that I had always been very interested in was Michael Marcus, from the first Market Wizards book. And after that book, he sort of disappeared from the public eye. But he, unfortunately, passed away in 2023, and his son did a podcast about him, which provided enough information for me to write a paper. So, I wrote a paper, and ultimately got that paper to Jack. And long story short, that led to us co-authoring the upcoming Market Wizards book.

But there is one thing that, Moritz, as you know, we can’t leave out, and that is how important you were to this process, because it was you who knew both Jack and I and made the introduction. So, without you, who knows if there would even be an upcoming Market Wizards book? So, we need to say thank you for the introduction.

[00:04:39] Moritz

Well, thank you for that, George. It’s great you guys got together and great that you co-authored that book. I should preface, this new book is going to be about solo traders. It’s not going to be about the hedge fund guys. It’s really prop traders, I think it’s fair to say.

And for the audience, to give you some background of what to expect, I’m just reading from, I think, the first couple of pages of the book, to which you kindly sent me an electronic copy. So, there’s a Swedish security guard who, after several failed attempts used his earnings to parlay a US$5,000 trading account to a peak of over US$100 million. A musician who dropped out of a prestigious music school to pursue a trading career and whose current cumulative profits total nearly US$500 million. An American trading out of Croatia who has trained more than 200 traders and has experienced only five minor losing months in 14 years. A prop trader… And it goes on, and goes on, and goes on.

So, all of these folks have massive returns, like mind bogglingly, amazingly large returns. The first question, and maybe the most obvious, Jack and George, to both of you, how do you find them? I mean, they don’t just drop out of the air. I mean, do they call you? How do you go about finding out who these people are?

[00:06:00] Jack

Well, to some extent this is true. Also, since the first Market wizard book, the interviews you do can lead to other interviews. For example, you know, I mean, that was true, originally, in the first Market Wizards book, where, I think I actually forget which ones gave me the other traders, but I know a few of them came from trader recommendations; people I was interviewing. And this time around as well.

So, one of the traders we interviewed actually was a source for at least two other interviews. George, I believe, is that correct? Lance, I think… at least two, maybe three. So that’s important source. And other than that, George, do you remember where we got some of the names from?

[00:06:52] George

It was a lot of different sources. There wasn’t really one way. And the original idea actually wasn’t to write a Market Wizards book.

From that paper… To back up a little bit, Jack said, you write well. Do you want an introduction to my editor? And I ultimately said no, initially, kind of like a bonehead, but it sat with me (and this is actually in my preface story). But I started studying the early careers of a lot of people who were very successful, like Warren Buffett and John Bogle. And I found a lot of stories of struggles. And so, I approached Jack with a book idea for that. And ultimately that led to the publisher saying, you guys should interview other people.

So, we didn’t attack it in maybe the way we would have if we had set out originally to do that. But we started to think of, well, who could we talk to? And we actually started talking to different hedge fund people.

And Jack wrote this in his preface, but there’s going to be a second book that focuses on hedge fund guys. But as part of that process, you know, Jack knows how to do this. He’s been doing this a long time and very well. He said we should round it out and talk to some other guys.

So, we talked to certain people that were basically running podcasts and said, who do you think we should talk to in terms of independent traders? We also did sort of, I guess I’ll call it a cattle call, through FundSeeder, where we asked people to submit their materials. And a lot of the guys came through that because we read through their returns, their results, their stories, and then communicated with them.

So, it really wasn’t, you know, a, a totally linear process in terms of finding people. It was a little bit of everything, I guess, is how I look at it.

[00:08:32] Jack

Yeah, and, in one case I can think of, the trader actually sent an email. Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I haven’t had a losing month for, you know, it was like 10 plus years. And I said, well, you know, I don’t know what the time preference actually planned to write a book, but I said, well, if you could prove that, the next time I do a book it could certainly be an interesting story.

In another case, so, one of the traders came about because I, I do talks sporadically, globally, and in, of all places, I think this one was in Croatia, and there was a trading group in Croatia of all places, and the head guy there, sort of… So, I knew him. And when I was doing the book, I asked him, because he had trained lots of traders and he had connections to traders in Europe, and he recommended a couple of people which didn’t work out for one reason or another. I think they didn’t want to participate.

But we kind of asked about his own record. He was kind of modest, and it turned out that he had an incredible return risk type of approach. Now, he never made a lot of money, but he like made money just about every month. And, on average, his average winning month was, I think, a little larger than his entire worst losing drawdown. You know, so, every month he was making more than his worst drawdown, and he’d been doing this for like 25 years. So that one came about simply because I gave a talk and to a group who the head guy ended up being in a book.

[00:10:14] Moritz

Yeah, yeah, cool, some randomness in there. Just, you know, they come along.

[00:10:18] Jack

So, like George said, lots of different directions.

[00:10:21] Moritz

Lots of different directions, and how do you go, like, this is one of the things that, you know, people ask me like, these returns are so amazing, and these traders, they’re so far between, how do you really go about checking on their track records and making sure they’re real, and legit, and they’re not like, that with the electronic tools that we have available today, they’re just throwing sand in your eyes and pretending something that they cannot back up?

[00:10:46] Jack

That’s a really important question and it’s actually critical. George, in this book, we shared the work, and George took the brunt of the verification process. So, I’m going to let him talk about it.

[00:11:02] George

Yeah, I mean the process from prior books was to review statements, tax documents, things like that. For this one we had to do more because you’re in the era of AI where people can fabricate documents and really there’s no one method that you use for everyone because it depends.

So, for example, if you take Michael Marcus, who Jack knew for the original book, he worked with him and knew him, and if you know someone or know someone who knows someone, it makes it a little bit easier to verify because you see them achieving these results. Right?

Other factors would come into play, like, well, what markets are they trading? What country are they domiciled in? We had, I guess at the end, about a 20 factor model, if you want to call it that, that had various sub factors that we would subject traders, trying to see if everything was okay.

To go through each and every one of them, the process for each one would be long and painful. But suffice it to say that we did go through statements, we went through tax documents, and if that was okay, we would potentially stop there. Sometimes we would go much further. We would review various other documents that they might have.

In some cases we talked to people’s brokers, with their permission, to ensure the trades were accurate. The brokers would essentially confirm the statements. We also, at times, spoke… In one case we spoke with an auditor who came in and did work because it was getting a little over our skis in terms of our ability to go through the statements forensically.

So, there wasn’t really one way that we did it. It was different for everyone, but it was a very in depth and, in my case, I’ve got to say, painful process because I’ve been reading these books for years. You want to make sure somebody who is bogus doesn’t get past the gate. So, I took it as seriously as I could.

And I should say one more thing. We did write a section that talks about the verification process. We didn’t do it in particular detail, but it really goes into some of what I just said in a more concise way and talks a little bit more about the other things we looked at.

[00:13:13] Moritz

Yeah, well, thanks for that. So, Jack, after what I said, almost 40 years of interviewing these top traders, in this instance, with this book, is there one thing that has genuinely surprised you?

[00:13:27] Jack

It surprised me the first book, and the second book maybe, but stopped surprising me because it happened in every book. And this book backed one thing I’m about to mention that was strikingly prominent, and that is how many of these people, who succeed in totally spectacular fashion beyond to levels which people think are possible, how many of those people actually bombed out not once, not twice, but sometimes even three times; In fact, four in one case.

So, the fact that people who are enormously successful actually had complete failures early on, as being a common event, that was originally surprising. But as I said, after seeing it in every single book I did, and this book was as prominent as any book I’ve ever done. Quite a few of the people had that experience. So, it no longer was surprising, but I think it is a surprising fact.

[00:14:29] Moritz

We’ll probably use this as a segue to some of the personality traits of these traders I want to speak about a little later in the conversation because when you blow out, it means you got to come back and that’s very painful. That’s financially painful. That’s emotionally painful. You need to have some stick-to-itiveness and grit to try it over, and over, and over, again. Not everybody is doing that.

I mean, to take the inverse of that, there might be market wizards out there, which we don’t know about because they did have successful and spectacular track records, but they blew out once and they’ve never made it back. But we’ve never seen their track records. Right? They’re out there in the dark.

But before we go there, one of the things, and I skimmed through the book and the first Market Wizards book with Michael Marcus, and there’s like these macro traders in there, and they had these bigger longer-term themes, and they were sticking to a trend, and sticking with a position, and not necessarily day trading. And I mean, markets evolve and edges change.

But one thing I picked up from the book is that this newest generation of wizards is doing things which the original market wizards would probably frown upon, and say, like, oh no, you should not be shorting options; oh no, you should not be shorting small cap stocks on leverage. But in this book it’s very prominent. This is what they do, or some of them do at least.

[00:15:54] Jack

Yeah, you really hit an important point, that differentiation. So, this book is… One way that it’s very different than some of the other books is exactly the point you raise, that some of the techniques used by the traders in this book – by some of them, fall into the category which is, you don’t do this.

I mean for example, one of the great themes in all of Market Wizard’s books until this one, although it’s true of some people in this book, is they do asymmetric trades. They pick trades where if they’re right, they can make a lot of money and if they’re wrong, they’ll only lose a small amount. And that is really a strikingly important theme for most of the market wizards, and I think an important theme for most traders.

But there were some traders in this book who used strategies that were exactly the opposite. For example, shorting small cap stocks, which a few of these traders did in their early career. When they got bigger, they went on to different things but that’s how they made their initial millions.

And that is a technique where some of these stocks can go up 1,000% in a day or something like that. So, it’s a very dangerous technique. And if they’re right, they’re going short, best they can do is it goes to zero.

So, that’s exactly opposite. It’s an asymmetric trade in the opposite direction. So, that’s one example. Another example, you mentioned a trader who’s two main strategies, one of which was selling options. And selling options is a classic example of a strategy which is a money machine until you hit a landmine and then it all goes away, your profits included, and your original capital in many cases. So, countless funds that have used this technique have had these money mountain type equity charts and then they have one large down. It goes all the way down, wipes them out completely. So that is not a technique that most of the market wizards would ever contemplate… not criticizing the fact.

And so, one of the traders, in fact, here, built his own fortune doing that, but he did it in a way that he controlled his risk. And that’s described in the chapter.

[00:18:35] Moritz

Yeah, or figuring out a good point in time and a good strike price or location when to sell the option. You know, that is probably the skill. If you’re naively selling these options, at some point you have disaster probably waiting for you.

But maybe that trader is very skilled at finding the right point in time of selling. George, anything to add there? What has stayed remarkably constant with these guys and what has changed over the years?

[00:19:02] George

I think if you read the trading, I’ll call it literature, you know that in a hundred plus years of consistencies you find that people say, don’t day trade, don’t trade small caps or penny stocks. And if given a choice, you should probably focus on being long instead of short because you’ve got more of a tailwind per history. And not to repeat what Jack said, but basically these guys are day trading penny stocks on the short side. So, if you had asked me before we started this project, what do I think you shouldn’t do, I would have probably said exactly that.

So yeah, in terms of what’s consistent, I wrote that Principles of Great Traders book and there were really three things that were consistent across time and across traders. And it was, you need to respect the price action of the market, you need to sit with your winning positions, and you need to cut your losing positions. And those three principles, as I call them, are really evident in all of these traders. Even if they’re day trading, they’re cutting their losses, they’re getting out very quickly most of the time. They’re not trying to pick tops.

I mean it sounds a little wild because you’re thinking, well, this is looking at one-minute bars or what have you. But they’re still waiting essentially for the market to confirm wanting to get short one of these stocks before they do it. And there are some charts that show this, actually, in the book, which is nice. It’s the first book that has annotated charts. But essentially, those three principles were inherent in all of these guys. So, I think those principles withstand the test of time. That’s what, in my opinion, is the most consistent across the traders, the books, and the series.

[00:20:42] Moritz

I had the impression, and it could be an incomplete observation, but my impression from what I read is that this cohort of market wizards is, on average, younger than the other market wizards. I don’t have the age brackets, but I kind of thought they’re probably a younger crowd. And I also thought that they’re all discretionary traders. Or am I wrong? I didn’t read every chapter.

Jack, is there one person in there that is a purely systematic trader doing great or are they all kind of like hybrids or discretionary guys?

[00:21:16] Jack

I think you’re right on both points. They’re much younger, on an average age. And it’s hard to get them to be too young because one of the criteria is looking for people with track records of at least 10 years, and preferably 20 or whatever. So, there is a limitation to how young they could be, but as a group, some of them started their teens. So, as a group they were much younger. And I think the oldest one might have been about 50, if I’m not mistaken. So, you’re quite correct on that.

[00:21:55] Moritz

And where are the women? Where are the women wizards?

[00:21:58] Jack

Can’t find them. I mean, not for lack of looking. I’m not saying they’re not there, but all else being equal, I would prefer if I had two traders, exactly equal in skill and record, hypothetically, and one was a man and one was a woman. If I’m biased, I would be biased to choosing the woman. But we just kept on coming across just men. It’s not by choice, it’s just by empirical fact.

[00:22:26] Moritz

You know, George, we once had an interview with Greg Zuckerman, I think, from the Wall Street Journal, speaking about Jim Simons: probably, if not the greatest, one of the greatest purely systematic mathematically quantitative traders. Why would you say, is it, that these monster big track records belong to these discretionary traders and that the systematic quant guys aren’t really in there?

[00:22:52] Jack

Well, actually, there was another point that you made that’s quite correct, that they’re all discretionary traders. And I think it’s… Unless you’re using a highly sophisticated quant approach, like Simons did, which is still around, obviously he is, or D.E. Shaw, people of that nature, where they’re using highly complex models. They’re trying to be the casino.

It’s not that they found these great trades that make super amounts of money. What it is, they have like a hundred different approaches each, which has a slight edge. And you put it all together and they’ve got a kind of casino type of a return. They’re doing tens of thousands of trades and small edges add up.

So, that’s a systematic approach, but it’s not the systematic approach that any individual can do, really. Right? These firms have hundreds of quants putting together these strategies.

When you get down to systems that a single individual can do, reality is you may get returns that are good, you may get a definite edge. So, not saying that can’t be done, but you’re not going to get the spectacular type of cumulative returns or spectacular return to risk numbers that typify the people that get chosen for market wizard books. The single systems just don’t deliver that type of profile, no matter how good they are.

So, it ends up being that most of the spectacular records, or in some cases all the ones we find, are discretionary traders. It’s not an accident.

[00:24:41] George

I think in the original Market Wizards book, Richard Dennis said that a computer back in the 1970s or ‘80s was somewhere around $100,000. And I don’t even know that data was available. It certainly wasn’t available like it is now.

You can get data for free from many websites now or it’s very low cost. So, you can also get an acer computer for $200 and Python’s free. So, I think to some degree, quantitative trading back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s had huge barriers to entry that no longer exist.

You can also look at it and say that high frequency trading has arguably made markets a lot more efficient, and decimalization has happened with most markets as well. So, the moves aren’t as extreme. And I’ve written about this on my Market Meditation Substack.

But really, when you add all those factors up, I think that barriers to entry have come down a lot. Competition has increased a ton with quantitative trading. So, to me it makes sense that the results are not the outlier results that they once were.

But one other thing that you may find interesting is I actually, as a guy who can code and a system designer, I went through, when we would talk to these guys on my side, just for my own sort of edification, I would go through and I would try to roughly quantify what they did. And what was interesting is I found that the results were obviously not as good as what they did. I could approximate them, but I couldn’t get as high as these guys got. And if you extended their approaches over a longer time period, the averages tended to come down.

So, I think that there’s obviously some skill present in what these guys do in terms of their ability to execute particular types of trades at certain times. And I also think that the timing for their strategies plays a role.

One of the guys, Kristjan Kullamagi (his chapter, if you pre-order now, is actually available, you can get it through the publisher), we talked to him about his drawdown. And so, he had this amazing run, but then the market environment changed and he took a bit of a drawdown, and he’s very transparent about it. So, the point being, you know, their skill plays a big role in their results, but also, the right market environment helps as well.

[00:26:53] Moritz

There’s a follow up question with that topic for you, Jack. This is a listener question from Joe. He said can’t wait for the interview. One question. When speaking with systematic investors, what level of discretion, if any, allows one to keep the systematic label? I personally would argue that it is binary. One either is or is not systematic.

I’m curious what Jack thinks as well as if he has insights on those who he has interviewed.

[00:27:22] Jack

I think that’s basically true. I think for the most part traders who are systematic are systematic. Everything is defined.

Now, you can have traders who use approaches where they computerize signals of certain sorts and then make a decision of whether they’re following that signal or how they’re doing it. I would argue that’s still discretionary. They’re just using the computer as a tool. So, I would agree. Essentially, you’re either systematic or not systematic; like, you’re pregnant and not pregnant. There’s no in-between.

[00:27:58] Moritz

Yeah, yeah, with probably the addition that a systematic trader is discretionary at the point when he or she decides to make a change to the system. Right? And then you re-implement it and follow it again. But that is the discretionary element in systematic trading that just is natural; that comes with it.

[00:28:18] Jack

Well, that leads to an important point. Changing your system, that’s okay. So, if you have a system, and then you realize a certain situation occurs where you didn’t think about that particular situation, and you said, well, I should have had a rule that’s this, in this type of circumstance. And you add that rule, then you’re still totally systematic. You’re just modifying it based upon the experience you have using the system. So, I would argue that’s still systematic.

In fact, that’s a sign of a purely systematic trader is when there’s something that needs to be fixed you don’t second guess it discretionarily. You actually change the system to accommodate that insight.

[00:28:59] George

I’ve always, as a longtime system designer, one thing that I think people don’t realize is that all of the logic underlying systems is ultimately discretionary. Which metrics are you going to use to qualify your systems? If you’ve got a hundred system designers, they would probably use a hundred different metrics, at different levels, and whether they were absolute relative.

So, is it the Sharpe ratio, or the Mar ratio, or the Sortino, or the gain-to-pain, and should it be absolutely over two or is it relative to the market (the stock market or whatever market you’re using as a benchmark in that case)?

I think this line between systematic and discretionary is… It’s almost impossible to define when you really think about the logic that underlies the systems because it’s ultimately discretionary.

[00:29:47] Moritz

George, you and I, when we chat, we sometimes speak about trading psychology, and the emotions, and the mentality of things. For these market wizards, what does it look like in practice?

I mean, do these successful traders have some personality traits that play a key role in their achievement? And I guess if they exist, they’re probably timeless personality traits. Right? I mean markets change, edges change. But there’s something in these people that is a constant.

[00:30:17] George

What is sort of persistent, despite no evidence in support of their persisting, as Jack said earlier, a lot of these guys blew up multiple times and they just stuck with it. And people in their lives were saying, you should go do something else. What are you doing? You’re not any good at this. And yet they stuck with it and eventually got it.

Now, where that comes from, when you ask them, you don’t get an answer that’s necessarily satisfying. It’s just kind of who they are. But there was one trader in particular, his name is Simon Russo, it’s actually a pseudonym but he had a…

There were seven points that I found, and I can read them here, it’s in the book, that were consistent in a lot of the great traders that I’ve either met or studied. And I’ll go through them quickly if that’s good.

One of them is self-awareness. Two, is clear goals. Three, is belief in oneself and themselves, even though the evidence may not support that belief. Three, is they’re very independent people… Sorry, that’s four. Four, is independence. Five, is passion. Six is commitment, they are very committed to trading. And seven is a willingness to keep going in pursuit of their dreams despite fear of failure. I guess the one that I didn’t really list, as a number in the book, but it might be focus; they have an ability to really focus.

But those, I guess, seven or eight things, depending on how you want to look at it, tend to be very consistent across the high achieving traders that I’ve either met or studied.

[00:32:02] Moritz

Would you put… I mean, this brings up maybe an interesting question from our pre-call. You said there’s something like a “cost” of being a market wizard. How can we examine or study the cost of being a market wizard? These people may be sitting in front of a trading screen for 14 hours a day or something like that.

But what you’ve just mentioned, I mean, some of these things are… They sound like they’re almost like a cost as well.

[00:32:28] George

I think so. I think it forces people to face their own psychology or inner demons and really get clear on who they are and what they want. And a lot of people in the world kind of BS themselves because it’s easier than looking at yourself very clearly and honestly. And so, I think that there’s a cost to that.

But when I think about the costs of being a market wizard, I guess the two that, from this book in particular, really come to mind are in the cases of the two guys who don’t have really any down months. They’re in front of their screens for 14, 16 hours a day. I mean, they can’t really get up. So, the cost of their returns is sort of eternal vigilance. They don’t get to… They go to the bathroom, but they don’t get to move much. They are glued to the market, and the market is their boss, whether they like it or not.

The other side of it… hen you see… some of these guys are public profiles, and they talk about their returns, but when you really see them, because they send them to us to review, it’s wild. You’ll have down 30% months, down 50% months.

So, the volatility inherent of the returns of the guys that turn small money into fortunes is very, very high. And I think we can all say, oh, yeah, well, if you can turn my US$5,000 into a US$100 million, I’ll give you that money. But what they don’t see is the ride. And I think that, from my experience, I mean, a lot of people I’ve known, I don’t think many people could handle it. If they went down 50% in a month they would say, that’s it, I’m done, pull my money. Or they would quit, assuming they were trading.

So, to me, I guess, one of the costs is the psychological side of things, but another is living in front of the screens. And yet a third is you have to be able to handle big volatility if you’re trying to make big returns.

[00:34:22] Jack

I would add that, in this particular book, more than any other market wizard book, more people came to the conclusion that, good, I’ve made a lot of money, but I’m not going to live the rest of my life this way. I want to do other things.

One trader posted a blog where he has two minds. One is wealth going up and one is health going down. And saying he wants to get on the health side more than the wealth side. There’s a big toll in performing like these people do for your whole life, or for most of your adult life. And some of these traders have reached a crucial point where they just don’t want to do it.

[00:35:11] Moritz

So, there’s like some of the traders that you’ve interviewed, and I think this is true also for the previous book, they speak about their success. They produce YouTube videos, they go on LinkedIn, or they talk about what it is that they’ve done, or how to identify a setup. So, in a way they’re… I’m not sure if they’re spilling the beans, giving away their secrets, but like they’re putting some information out there.

So, with that as background, would you say that anyone can be a market wizard if they’re just studying these things and putting in enough time and passion? Or is it a trade where you either have it or you don’t have it?

[00:35:50] George

Sure. So, can anybody be a market wizard? Guess I want to believe yes, but I wonder. I think that one of the things that we’ve found with some of the guys in this book is they were just born with certain inherent personality traits that lend well to success. They deal with pressure well. They don’t get sort of scattered or upset by things working against them. They stay calm. And I don’t know that anyone can learn that type of thing. I think that you’re inherently born with that or you’re not.

Now, in the old books though, there were things like Michael Marcus said that he eventually developed a feel for markets, which implies that he wasn’t born with it. So, he must have developed that feel over time. And a lot of these guys, even if they go on to great success, they blow up initially. So, presumably, they weren’t just born naturals. I think we all know that naturals aren’t actually a thing.

But I believe that, to some extent, Jack, the question was, can anybody be a market wizard? But I think that there are things that people can do to improve, to get closer. But I sometimes wonder if there are inherent personality traits that are necessary to really achieve wizard level success that, if you’re not born with, you can’t change who you are.

[00:37:15] Jack

So, yeah, so, you know, I have a pretty strong opinion on this one. I basically believe the trading is no different than anything else. You know, you’re either born to be a great athlete, or you’re born to be a great musician, or you’re born to be a great trader. So, I definitely don’t feel that anybody could be a market wizard. Now, I think most people can learn, if they’re really devoted enough, and do all the work, and do the right things, to become profitable traders. That’s no different.

But like market wizard type of performance… I just think that, as we discussed earlier in this book, all the traders are discretionary. So, you’ve got to have a certain type of psychological makeup that makes it possible. And I don’t think it’s true of all people, or most people. I think it’s a rare quality that allows somebody to reach that type of level.

And it’s a combination of a lot of the things that George mentioned; just total commitment, and super hard work, and the right type of psychological makeup, and on, and on, and on. But no more than everybody is going to be a football star, or a basketball star, or a soloist for the New York Philharmonic, not everybody is going to be a Michael Marcus or the people in this book.

[00:38:47] Moritz

Yeah, let me throw in a fun listener question from a person also named George, by the way. I really like this question, so you guys can pick who’s answering it.

The question is what edge, in 2026, would seem crazy, naïve, or amateur in the 1990s, and vice versa. What seems in “boomer now”, that was an edge back then.

[00:39:15] George

I’m thinking of the Marcus quote where he says that, back when he was doing really well, and this may be more the ‘70s, ‘80s than the ‘90s, but just knowing the basic trading principles was an edge back then. And now there’s so much information available via Jack’s great books and other sources. So, I think people know a lot more about trading than they ever knew before because we’re in the information age.

In terms of what is an edge now that back then people would have said, no, I guess I would go back to the shorting small cap penny stocks for day trades. From all the research I’ve done, outside of this book, and I learned things. You learn things doing these books because things that I didn’t think were possible are possible. So, I said it earlier, but if you said, what shouldn’t you do? I’d say you shouldn’t short penny stocks for day trades. And here these market wizards are doing it successfully. So, that would be my answer to what works now that in theory shouldn’t have in the ‘90s or ‘80s, so on, and so forth.

[00:40:24] Jack

I would just clarify that when George says penny stocks, not literally. These people didn’t literally short penny stocks. They shorted stocks that were maybe below US$10, you know, single digit stocks, but not literally penny stocks, which is kind of a more extreme version because you’re really super limited there.

So, they might be shorting a stock that goes from US$1 to US$3 or US$4 looking, you know, which is a complete pump and dump, and this going to go back to $1. They wouldn’t be shorting a stock that’s like US$.50 or something.

[00:40:59] George

Sorry to clarify that, I guess my definition, and I don’t know exactly where it comes from other than my mind and lots of years of reading, but it’s probably a penny stock to me is a stock that trades under $5 a share.

[00:41:09] Jack

Yeah, if you broaden it to that, yeah.

[00:41:11] Moritz

Well, I didn’t know that. I thought a penny stock would need to be a penny stock, but who knows?

Now, as we’re winding this down, I think you have mentioned it already, George, for anyone who, like me, feared that the Market Wizard series would come to an end, no, no, no. The good news is you’ll have a second part coming up, and I think it’s scheduled for release in 2027, so next year. And that apparently is going to be more focused on hedge fund traders or pod shop traders as opposed to the solo traders. And that’s because you’ve had so much material and so many people to speak to that you couldn’t put it all in one book. Did I get that right?

[00:41:53] Jack

Yeah, that is correct. Exactly right, yeah.

[00:41:56] Moritz

So, something to look forward to for next year. That’s going to be number seven in the series then.

[00:42:02] George

Yes, I believe so, yes. Depending on how you count them, I guess. There was a little book of Market Wizards. One thing that may get people excited is we’re talking to some of the earlier market wizards as well, including some of the originals. So, we’ll see if they become chapters. But those conversations have been exciting.

[00:42:23] Moritz

I’m sure, and I’m very much looking forward to reading it in the next year, and holding the book in my hand. I always enjoy that very much.

Great, we’ll leave it there. Did I leave anything out that’s massively important? Anything you’d like to add or are we all good?

[00:42:39] George

I guess I would just add, and I sort of alluded to it earlier, but if people want to pre-order the book, and they can find the links through my bio on X, you can get access to the two prefaces; Jack’s preface, my preface, and then Kristjan Kullamagi’s chapter, from now until the end of May. So, if you can’t wait till June 9 when the book comes out, you can get early access if you pre-order.

[00:43:05] Moritz

Great. I suggest people do that. Sounds good. Well Jack and George, thanks very much for joining me today on the podcast. I think this will be a really interesting and enjoyable bonus episode for our listeners around the world. I certainly wish you, both of you, lots of success with your new book and I’m already looking Forward to part two in 2027.

So, thanks everyone for listening, and until next time, on Open Interest.

[00:43:32] Ending

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