Rating: 
Summary: Exceptional Insight
Review: Overflowing with observations and interconnections from disparate fields such as sports, finance, and physics, the reader will find this text highly refreshing, especially when compared to typically available trading literature. As the title suggests, Practical Speculation eloquently bridges the gap between financial theory and potential opportunities for the trader, delivering several testable trading/investment ideas and a statistically based methodology for ongoing research.Undoubtedly this book will be derided by hordes of chartists, and other interests who the authors have challenged. However, readers should keep in mind that the observations, studies, and wisdom in this book are the result of decades as practitioners in the field. Unfortunately the vast majority of books about trading are written by those whose writing and ideas are too infrequently disciplined by real money risks (and rewards) in the markets (often emboldening charlatans to suggest making money is easy). Practical Speculation is successful in helping the reader establish a systematic approach to testing, and more generally to apply a healthy does of skepticism to the pronouncements of market gurus (and other experts). Ever wary of their own fallibility, the authors encourage the readers not to take the strategies proffered in the book at face value and test for themselves. To this end the chapter on How to Avoid Spurious Correlations alone is worth the price of the book, especially for quantitative traders. There are only a handful of trading and investments books worth reading - this is one of the best.
Rating:
Summary: Snatching the Invaders
Review: A patient learns for the first time that her body has been invaded by disease: cancer, dementia, or multiple sclerosis. The possibility that the disease might be debilitating and even fatal suddenly assaults her consciousness. At that point, a psychologist such as myself learns a great deal about such a patient's character. Some lapse into defeat and self-pity, their spirit dying long before their body gives way. Others flee into denial, ignoring steps that could enhance their life, or frantically scurrying from one mystical cure-all to another. A few, however, rise to the occasion with magnificent stature. Confronted with their own mortality, they refuse to yield their lives or their reason. They search and re-search the treatments that will maximize the quantity and quality of life and commit themselves to making the most of their remaining days. In refusing to allow their bodies to be snatched from them by disease, they are an inspiration to those whose lives they touch. Niederhoffer and Kenner's book Practical Speculation begins and ends with a different, but related story of body snatching. They draw upon Jack Finney's 1954 science fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers to describe the current plight of traders and investors. Confronted with a three year bear market that has placed their portfolios in near-terminal status, market participants-like our patient-are all too tempted to lapse into pessimism and despair or flee to mystical, untested promises of hope. The message of Practical Speculation is straightforward: in facing adversity bravely, refusing to abandon reason, we-and our portfolios-participate in the centuries-old ascent of the markets-and human progress. The hero of Practical Speculation is neither Niederhoffer nor Kenner, but the scientific method. In chapter after chapter, the authors lay bare the ways in which analysts, journalists, and gurus offer advice and perspective that is entirely unsupported by facts or even the effort to gather and evaluate those facts. In a wry touch, the authors introduce a group of symbols that appear throughout the book: a pencil and envelope representing the scientific evaluation of data; a magician's hat whenever mystical ideas are recounted; a pair of storks to represent spurious correlations. This is a book that both debunks and enshrines. In Part One, it savages the "mumbo-jumbo" that comprises much of contemporary financial journalism and analysis. Part Two offers the antidote: "practical speculation" based upon the empirical investigation of market patterns. The discerning reader will recognize at once that Niederhoffer and Kenner have tackled their own version of the Finney script, snatching victory from invading adversity. Niederhoffer suffered the well-chronicled demise of his successful fund in the late 1990s. Kenner, a journalist who went outside the bounds of her trade to find market insight in everything from music to baseball, suffered the demise of her career when she refused to adopt a more conventional mien. It is no surprise that the opening quote of their book, taken from Invasion, includes the exhortation, "We shall fight them in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." Practical Speculation is an affirmation of the markets-and those that would tame them-in the face of an unrelenting market decline. In the end, however, Practical Speculation is practical. Included in the book are concrete ideas for trading and investment that draw upon option volatility, bond movements, insider behavior, and company fundamentals. Even more useful are eminently readable sections that introduce the reader to statistical analysis, including scatterplots and correlations. These practical insights are drawn from diverse fields, including physics, racquet sports, chemistry, and baseball. Taken together, they model a way of thinking about markets: identifying patterns from seemingly unrelated spheres, creating hypotheses, and then subjecting these hypotheses to critical, objective scrutiny. This alone is well worth the cost of the volume. The best thing I can say about Practical Speculation is that it will be read in the future. As inspiration and education, its lessons are timeless.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This is one of the best trading/investing books that I have read in many years. Niederhoffer/Kenner challenged many of my long held beliefs. This book has many ideas that will help you make money and is pretty fun to read. I think it is great to learn from someone who really has MADE millions and LOST millions. I would rather learn real estate from Donald Trump than Robert Kiyosaki.
Rating:
Summary: Oevre Pour Le Louvre
Review: I am a professional loss-taker, and the losses I have taken stretch in a long uneven line, like a broken column of beaten, bedraggled soldiers, out of the dust and grime of the twenty year past. Naturally, I've read a great number of books, monographs, academic and practioners' studies, reminiscences, diatribes, prayers, comics,cult manuals, and propoganda. Then there are my soldiers, each with his own sorry story of defeat, near triumph, and regret. When regarded in relation to all other extant works, Practical Speculation is as Picasso's Repose, sitting quietly in a small corner of the MoMA, at once a work of great simplicity and staggering mastery, a study in form, composition, and imagination. Anyone who can fight their way through the traffic, street hawkers, inclement weather, and lassitude long enough to find the door, go up the escalator, and enter the little room, will find great art; that Niederhoffer and Kenner should show such a humorous and generous sensibility in its rendering, makes the response automatic: unabiding gratitude.
Rating:
Summary: take a journey on the speculative high seas
Review: Practical Speculation takes the reader on fresh and bracing adventure through the tumultuous waters of financial investing. I have read many books about markets and stocks and not one of them offers more honest and innovative ideas than this one. As insightful as Victor Niederhoffer's first book Education of a Speculator, this collaboration with Laurel Kenner takes on all the myths and subterfuge of modern day Wall Street. One of the ideas of the book is that " the public has no right to lose as much money as it does" and this book does all it can to make sure you're not among them. But be ready to set aside your current beliefs. If you believe as I did that rising earnings leads to rising stocks, charts have predictive power, or your favorite business weekly will help your P&L, then you may have a few surprises. The book is full of interesting references, from Greek oracles to horse handicapping experts that make it fun and humurous to read. But it also takes a serious and quantitative look at ways to navigate the markets. Chapters look at how energy transfers model cash flows, why Valueline has outperformed for so many years, and how baseball relates to returns. But above all it shows the reader how to develop and test investment ideas, and how to act independently in the markets. The authors bring unique and extensive experience.And between the two of them they have seen or done just about everything there is on the Street. DGC
Rating:
Summary: Get the Joke
Review: Get the joke, this guy is a trader. He is not on salary at the local bucket shop pitching for you to use sell stops to generate commissions. Most of the folk lore on Wall Street is driven by the commission house in a quest to take every penny you have.
After you read this fantastic book, go a head and re-read Education of a Speculator. That book will begin to make more sense, as it did for me. The principle of ever changing cycles is one of the biggest reasons for failure. The fear of failure is the biggest reason the commission houses slowly bleed us to death. Victor has one simple rule for all of us to use in our trading, test. Test, test and re test the idea, before risking your valuable capital. If you do not know how to test, learn. Do not trust anyone's work but your own. Keep it simple, take big risks, when you have an edge. When you do not, take your kids to the library and read about science. Vic calls that a meal for a lifetime...LACK
Rating: 
Summary: I wasn't that impressed...
Review: I browsed through this book at a local bookstore. The title definitely grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, the author devoted severaly chapters to various "findings" of academic financial analysts demonstrating a particular trading method doesn't work. If you aren't familiar with this work, it is important to understand it. I've heard all this before and after much research, I'm not all that impressed with the practical applications of these academic finance theories. For example, in one chapter the author criticizes the trend following methodology, and reports that his anaysis of broad market data (SP-500, DJ-30) over a monthly time period), that instead of trends, you find reversion to the mean. Unfortunately, trend following methods now take into account many other factors--volatility, volume, etc. Price action alone won't help with trading decisions. Technical analysis is more than just an analysis of price action. So his criticism of trend following methods is irrelevant. Most intelligent chartists would tell you that most charts do not suggest anything useful is happening, and one point of TA is to screen the market down to useful candidates. But there are times when the market action clearly is saying something important. The interesting portion of the book details a system of trading certain stocks based on value-line recommendations. Unfortunately, not enough info was given to put anything useful into practice.
Rating:
Summary: Sumptuous fare for a hungry trading mind
Review: Leonardo da Vinci, generally is known to the common man as an artist -- the painter of Mona Lisa. The understanding of the ratios and measures into human anatomy and the spirit of scientific and philosphical enquiries that emanated from his approach are known to fewer who have delved deeper into him.
Niederhoffer who is a champion in seven diverse fields of human activity brings this book as a sequel(Education of a Speculator) and as an independent compilation of the meticulous implementation of the spirit of scientific enquiry applied to markets in particular.
A hungry mind that is grappling to figure out the scientific method behind the art of trading would find this to be one of the most sumptuous meals offered ever.
The Science behind Mona Lisa, if Da Vinci was to explain in the same way as Niederhoffer and Kenner go into explaining the methods of the art of trading, would feed the hungry mind as much as the beauty of Mona Lisa feeds the hungry visual senses.
Rating: 
Summary: TWO THUMBS DOWN......
Review: Can't believe they actually published this book....Victor Niederhoffer truly shows how confused he is about using the most elementary technical market tools...Especially chapter on candle stick charting proves once again he is doing a so called research about a subject that he doesn't even understand, and more comically he proceeds and finds a publishers that will actually print his book....What is more extraordinary to me is, Victor once actually run an investment company....And instead of going back and trying to understand and learn from his mistakes, Victor prefers to put his head into the sand, and trying to convince everybody that most of the technical indicators that are out there are basically useless....My time reading this book was totally wasted, save yours....
Rating: 
Summary: One of the worst investment books!
Review: If you are looking into some advice on 'practical speculation' then, contrary to what this book title suggests, you will not find it here. After finishing this book I cannot think of anything useful I read there. The book mostly is a tribute to Victor Niederhoffer' various skills (mathematics, squash, etc.), which quite frankly I do not care about. The criticism (or bashing, should I say) of various famous investors or prominent figures of the investment world borders on ridiculous. I am not saying that these investors are right in their approaches and Niederhoffer is wrong - honestly, I don't know. But the way Niederhoffer deals with it is very condescending and lacks of any real proof. In very few cases when the author tries to support his words with some statistical calculations I found such calculations to be totally unconvincing and taking completely out of context. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one (that this book definitely deserves as a financial education tool) is some amusing stories and facts I found there. Overal it is still a waste of time.
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