Skip to main content

Market Wizard, Steve Clark on Trading: Grow Your Equity Curve

Trading wisdom recap: Steve Clark, founder of Omni Partners, was featured in Jack Schwager's 2012 book, Hedge Fund Market Wizards. 

Clark's interview with Schwager provided us with some valuable trading insights; "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Steve Clark" was one of our most popular posts ever.

If I had to pick my favorite sections from Clark's chapter, it would be boiled down to these two concepts: "Do more of what works (and less of what doesn't work)" and "Manage your equity curve".

Here's his full quote on the supreme importance of growing your equity curve: 

"Your job as a trader is to make the line of your equity curve go from bottom left to top right. That's it. Don't get hung up on other supposed "mandates". Protect your capital and the direction of that equity line."  

I will leave you with one last series of quotes from Steve Clark's interview with Jack Schwager. When asked about the characteristics of traders who succeed, Clark replied:

"They all work hard... Nearly all the successful traders I have known are one-trick ponies. They do one thing and they do it very well. When they stray from that single focus, it often ends in disaster."

 "Really good traders are also capable of changing their minds in an instant. They can be dogmatic in their opinion and then immediately change it. If you can't do that, you will be caught in a position and be wiped out."

If you'd like to read more, just click on the Amazon links in our Hedge Fund Market Wizards post series and buy the book!

 Related posts:

 1. Your Job as a Trader: Manage Your Equity Curve

 2. Maximize Your Trading Gains, Not Wins: William Eckhardt Interview 

Subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter - you'll get actionable trading ideas and valuable market insights sent to your inbox. You can follow our real-time updates on Twitter.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Nasdaq credit rating junked.

S&P cut Nasdaq's credit rating to junk status citing debt burdens and its questionable strategy to buy a controlling interest in the London Stock Exchange. Financial Times reported that the exchange's counterparty credit & bank loan rating were lowered fromm BBB- (lowest investment grade rating) to BB+. The change will increase Nasdaq's borrowing costs should it wish to pursue aquisition targets. For an earlier look at the exchange consolidation trend that brought about Nasdaq's push for a stake in the LSE, please see "Exchange fever" .
Read more

Clean Money - John Rubino: Book review

Clean Money by John Rubino 274 pages. Hoboken, New Jersey John Wiley & Sons. 2009. 1st Edition. The bouyant stock market environment of the past several years is gone, and the financial wreckage of 2008 is still sharp in our minds as a new year starts to unfold. Given the recent across-the-board-declines in global stock markets (and most asset classes) that have left many investors shell-shocked, you might wonder if there is any good reason to consider the merits of a hot new investment theme, such as clean energy. However, we shouldn't be too hasty to write off all future stock investments. After all, the market declines of 2008 may continue into 2009, but they may also leave interesting investment opportunities in their wake. Which brings us to the subject of this review. John Rubino, author and editor of GreenStockInvesting.com , recently released a new book on renewable energy and clean-tech investing entitled, Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom . In Clean ...
Read more

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4. ...
Read more