Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer & Laurel Kenner Dedicated to the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter;  a forum for us to use our meager abilities to make the world of specinvestments a better place.

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Tim Melvin:

For history buffs and fiction fans Jeff Shaara's new book, To the Last Man is an incredible read. He has inherited his fathers sense of history and attention to detail and he does as well here with world war one as he did with the civil and revolutionary wars. He sets the mood very well, is true to the historical and brings the characters alive.an excellent read. It makes the highly prized tim says must read list.

I am sending this to the open list as it's a recommendation for book that has little to do with markets...The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo..  It's my first reread in 8 yrs..  I wonder why I neglected it for so long...
The age of Hugo is reflected in his writings so vividly and you can get a taste and feel of his age and the era he's living in...
I wondered why this book never reached the fame of The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Les Miserables... After reading Hugo I feel that every other romancier lack in emotions some way or the other...not excluding Shakespeare....Highly, highly recommended even though it might not contribute to the ringing sound of your cash register.

Big Al:

Nothing like a good book list for the weekend.  Thanks for starting it, Tim.


Non-fiction:

As I am the left-hand anchor of the financial/trading-experience/education
distribution on Spec List, I cannot offer much in the way of investment
reads.  But that allows me the freedom to branch out:

Bill Bryson:  I do some long drives, and I have listened to A Walk in the
Woods (about the Appalachian Trail) and In a Sunburned Country (Australia)
several times on tape in the car.  Just outstanding stuff.

Timothy Ferris:  Excellent science writer.

James Gleick:  His bios of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton.

Andrew Weill:  Integrated medicine.

Richard Rhodes:  The Making of the Atomic Bomb -- with Grover Gardner as
reader, this is one of the best audio books I've ever listened to.  Alas,
Books-on-Tape is no longer renting books (see their site for why), but this
audio book is often available at good libraries.

Also great on tape:  Grover Gardner reading the Wil and Ariel Durant series,
The Story of Civilization.


Fiction:

I'll start with, for me, the easy pick:  John Le Carre:  At his best, the
best.  Talk about understanding deception, of self and others.  And plays
well to my cynical, skeptical side.  Start with The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold, then The Little Drummer Girl, and work your way to the Smiley
"trilogy": Tinker,Tailor,Soldier,Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley's
People.  Then cap it off with A Perfect Spy, The Secret Pilgrim and Our
Game.  If you like books on tape, Le Carre is by far the best reader of his
own work -- very talented guy.  You can also now get the excellent Alec
Guiness Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People on DVD:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006A8T4.  And the
also-outstanding Perfect Spy is available on VHS.

Charles McCarry:  The American Le Carre.  Read The Miernik Dossier, The
Tears of Autumn, The Secret Lovers and The Last Supper, in that order.  Also
*not* to be missed is Lucky Bastard, his re-imagining of Bill Clinton as a
Soviet mole -- also great as a book on tape.

George MacDonald Fraser:  Playing to my cynical side again, Fraser lifts a
character from Tom Brown's School Days, a righteous 19th-century novel, and
recreates Harry Flashman as a shiftless, drunken, womanizing, bigotted,
cruel coward who winds up an officer in the British Army and manages to get
involved in most of the interesting adventures of the Victorian era.  And
along the way, Fraser works in a lot of great history as comedy. (Fraser
also should have gotten the academy award for writing the screenplays to the
Michael York-Three & Four Musketeers films.  But there was a little
competition...see below.)

Robert Graves:  I, Claudius and Claudius the God.  I thought the BBC
adaptation was some of the best television ever broadcast, but the books are
just as good.


Extra note:  In looking over the Academy Awards from the early 70's in order
to make sure Fraser *didn't* win, it sure seemed to me that Hollywood made a
lot of good movies during that stretch, as witnessed by the winners of Best
Original Screenplay and Best Adapted, from 1970-1976:  M*A*S*H, Patton, The
French Connection, The Hospital, The Godfather, The Candidate, The Exorcist,
The Sting, Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest, All the President's Men, Network.

And as long as I have strayed into mentioning -- gasp -- television:  the
entire Prime Suspect series is available on tape, too.  Helen Mirren as DCI
Jane Tennyson makes you realize why mature, competent women are so sexy.

Okay, I went way over budget.  Sorry.
 

Fiction: Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower, about Freeman Dyson of atomic bomb fame and his hippie son , George who paddles a really cool baidarka canoe up the inland passage, something that is on my list of thing to do before I die. Conan the Conquerer, Robert Howard,. '"Who is this madman?" growled a bearded ruffian. "He wears Nemedian mail, but speaks with an Aquilonian accent." "No matter ," quoth another. "Cut him down, and then we'll hang the hag." And so saying he ran at Conan, lifting his sword. But before he could strike, the king's great blade lashed down splitting helmet and skull........"..... and so on..... Snow Walker, Farley Mowat. Some real chicken skin spooky Eskimo stories especially the "Swimmer." Rogue Wave, Theodore Taylor. Sea short stories. The one about the intelligence officer cracking the captured German U boat crew is the best. Non-Fiction Kamehameha and his Warrior Kekuhaupio, Stephen Desha, Kamehameha Schools Press 2000 ISBN0-87336-062-3 Some really great stories. There's one where 3000 20-30 man double canoes cross the channel to attack Maui. The entire ocean is black with canoes. Kamehameha and Kekuhaupio attack several hundred warriors by themselves at night. They stand on the front of the canoe, and as the opponents throw spears at them, they catch the spears out of the air!, pile them up, and then when they started throwing them back at the other group, the other group freaks and ran away saying, "who is this guy? Kamehameha stood 7 feet tall and weighed around 300 pounds. If any commoner got in his shadow, they crushed the guy's skull. Some heavy dude! We, The Navigators, David Lewis. About the ancient Polynesian art of celestial navigation without instruments. By the way, Mau Pialug, the star of the book is in HIlo now, and I had been invited to go meet him, and was going to ride the Hokulea, the 60 foot Hawaiian Canoe to meet him, but a huge storm came and drove the canoe back with damage and injury, so I didn't get to go. (for chair, "Sailing Knots, J. Altimiras, no plot, no characters, just hard core knots) Reviews of : My Life as A Quant, Derman Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, John Hull. Interest Rate Term Structure and Valuation Modeling, Fabrozzi I have this odd habit of reading five books at once, a chapter from each each night. I call it my "homework". That's a good way to read the three books, because they cover similar subjects in 'lite', challenging, and rocket scientist level. On Derman's My Life, skip the first eight chapters unless you like to hear him whine about being a nerdy guy. But it does get good when he starts the Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers war stories and the "Time magazine eighth grade" version of the Black Sholes formula and development of the Black Derman Toy yield curve model. (That's my level) Hull's Options futures book kicks it up several notches and goes through text book style the formulas and explanations for many of the financial models for futures an options and thing referred to on the list without assumptions of any basic knowledge. What is interesting, Derman tells some stories about Hull. Derman's book is a good companion since it gives a little color and background to development of some of the formulas appearing in Fabrozzi's compilation of articles about term structure of interest rates where he discusses the Black,Derman Toy model Derman created, and compares it to several other yield curve models, including one by Hull, in dry hard core math. Better to read Hull before Fabrozzi. Fabrozzi's book explains the math and proofs for the yield curve models and trees enough to give a non mathematician a good feel for the concepts. Just don't ask me to do the math. An early post to the list was about Flatlanders and 3 dimensional charts. Now we have seen studies that implied volatility and vix are correlated to SP, and so is the yield curve. We also have seen that under Black Sholes theory bonds and stocks can be set up as synthetic options. So there is information to be had from the relationship of future volatility and interest rate expectations revealed in the yield curve fluctuations. I'd like to see in real time a three dimensional chart with live feed to compute the implied volatility/yield curve interest moves on a third future expectations axis against time and price in a 3 dimensional shape of waves. The program would show an unstable structure with a high Tstat, say high volatility, high standard deviation and high percentage move as an unstable wave,... in a moving picture chart of a breaking wave. Like a surfer, that would how a high probability trade entry point at the crest of the breaking wave structure of high volatility, high deviation and large percentage move in graphic form. It could be calibrated to the current yield curve and volatility and might be useful for a trading interface. Derman says that the interface is as important as the theory to a trader.

"Flow" (http://tinyurl.com/69awh) by U of Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszmentmihali (put that in your spelling bee). Interesting discussion of ultimate experiences and losing one's self in work or play, with applications to gaming game performance and (I think) trading. "Emotional Intelligence" (http://tinyurl.com/6suuc) by Daniel Goleman is analysis of the role of control of emotion in relationships with success and individuals. IMO, applies to learning, defeat of the intellect, trading, and parenting of yourself as well as your children.

I've just finished reading Faulkner's The Hamlet. Any book with a character called Wallstreet Slopes has to be fun! How would you have handled Flem Snopes if he you knew he was on the other end of your trades?

I would like to start by saying that i never read as many books in my life until being a part of this list.

Speculating

Educ of Spec (chair)
Practical Spec.(chair & collab)
Theory of Stock Speculation (Crump)
Art of Spec. (Carret)

Economics: Free to Choose (Freidman)

Fiction
Blood Meridian, Pretty Horses, Suttree or anything by Cormac McCarthy (Speculation in guts)
Call of the Wild (London, big Buck fan)
The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous (Kipling)

Non-fiction
Merriam-Webster Dictionary most useful book ever done. I had a English teacher (Mr. Folks) who in high school challenged any student who beat him in Scrabble with 200 point spot to an A in the class. I became addicted to the dictionary

For the aspiring runners out there. "The Book or Running" by Jeff Galloway, especially the 1st edition if available. Jeff was an Olympian with Shorter in the infamous 72 Olympics. After writing this classic for the beginner to the national class athlete has since gone to the more mass audience that only want to complete a marathon. And I suspect his recent books do a good job of helping you "complete one". But this book is great if your real goal is to get in shape, staying in shape, not just joining the ranks of marathoners.

"The Lore of Running" by Noake. This is a more scientific look at running, not a read through in one sitting, but a must for coaches of runners or for the self coached runner. Though a some of it is a bit dated. Because it fundamentally science, the more modern ideas are built off of this foundation.

Self Portrait of a Hero, The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu. -- out of print but worth reading for inspirational value. Shows us what we can when we are tough. Tao Te Ching -- nuggets of timeless wisdom galore.

Until last night I had read all but one of Haruki Murakami's U.S.-published books. Here is a complete list of his books that, until last night, I had read:

The Elephant Vanishes, and After the Quake, both collections of short stories
Underground, a book of interviews with those who survived the Tokyo gas attack
And the novels:
Norwegian Wood
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Dance Dance Dance
A Wild Sheep Chase
South of the Border West of the Sun
Sputnik Sweetheart

I may have previously mentioned, under different circumstances, the quote from A Wild Sheep Chase that I keep on hand: "We can, if we choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary." It is unfair to Haruki Murakami to choose a single sentence from his work. But, to me, this little sentence says more about how one might approach life than any self-important book written with that intent in mind.
Until last night I had read all but one of Haruki Murakami's books, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I had been saving this book for several years because I dreaded not having any more of his work to read. Maybe dread isn't the right word, but I don't know how else to describe it. Oh, I picked the book up many times, but for some reason I just couldn't seem to bring myself to start it. At least by not having read it I would always have it to look forward to.

Meanwhile, I re-read most of his other books. Especially Dance Dance Dance, and A Wild Sheep Chase. Sometimes, after I would finish re-reading one of his books, I would try to make myself think what Haruki Murakami would write about next in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I probably read the description on the back cover of the book a thousand times. It says, "In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo."
So you can see I had a pretty good head start for imagining what he might write about. Still, I found that those thoughts would just clang around in my head without any life or substance. Sometimes he found his wife, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he found the cat, sometimes he didn't. Just empty, idle thoughts, without any direction; lifeless, dull, stiff thoughts contained by a limited imagination.
You might think "What a pointless exercise." And you'd be right. But it was something pointless I did over and over again just the same, maybe a bit like how some people imagine what it would be like to win the lottery, or wonder how different things would be if only they had selected another choice at that crucial moment the options were offered up.

And so, mostly, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle just sat there on the shelf unread. Sometimes it would move to the reading table downstairs and rest there, quietly unopened. Occasionally I would find it on my nightstand sandwiched between other books I was reading. Once it traveled with me in my suitcase to New York City, but it stayed packed up in the room for the entire trip, even as I went out and did business, ate, and drank with friends, coming in noisily late at night and too tired to touch it. Never once did it complain about all of these slights. Not that it would have mattered if it did. But I must say that I began to find in the book an admirable nobility in its steadfast implacable endurance, its ability to sit there uncomplaining, and unread.
The turning point came when I learned Haruki Murkami has a new book coming out in January called Kafka on the Shore. That settled it. I would finally read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and not read for a long time Kafka on the Shore. Of course, I did not stop to consider whether Kafka on the Shore would handle going unread for so long with the same unyielding constancy as The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

Now, let's put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak. You think for a moment what I am going to write next. There is a tendency to think that all books are alike in a certain, complete and unchanging way. There is a tendency to focus on their exterior bounds and definitions; spine, paper pages, pressed cover, defined beginnings and endings, ignoring the possibility of secrets that make them different on the inside. On the one hand, why should Kafka on the Shore not handle being unread in precisely the same manner The Wind-up Bird Chronicle did? Did I ruin The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by not reading it for so very long? Was the build-up, the tension, the anticipation, too much for one little book to bear? Just who did I think I was in the first place, anyway, transferring the entire weight of my selfish disregard and, ultimately, such a heavy burden of power, power that might be both unwanted and dangerous, to an innocent, defenseless book? Do you think it was unfair of me to do that? And do you think the book might use all of its newly acquired power against me?

Well you are well ahead of the game if you can see any possible solutions, or even appropriateness, in those strange questions. For I did not even imagine such things when I sat down to read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I did not imagine the despair I would feel as the story unfolded, the sense of hopelessness thrust upon me as I began to see that I would never, ever be able to write a sentence as beautiful as any that appeared in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. How could I have?
Relationships with books are ordinarily very tenuous things for me. I don't fall in love very easily. And I'm also very reserved. I don't like to reveal too much to my books, and prefer to let them do most of the talking. But for some reason, and without really being conscious of it, I disclosed something deeply personal about myself to The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I had let slip a glimpse into a dream that I had always held carefully hidden, something too sensitive to even speak aloud, and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle told me that it would not come true. And I was devastated. But I knew what she had told me was true, and I admired her honesty and courage in telling me. If I were younger, I might have hated The Wind-up Bird Chronicle for hurting me, even if she didn't mean to, even if she was only doing what she thought was right. I might have hated her just because she was only doing what she thought was right. But I don't hate The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I love The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and on most days that is enough.