What I learned losing a million dollars
by Jim Paul, Brendan Moynihan · first published 1994
10mentions
4recommended by
9HN commenters
2010–2021first – last mentioned
44% recommend56% neutral
Nassim Nicholas Taleb says that this is the best finance book he knows.
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…http://tickerforum.org is also superb, no-bs. I'd also recommend reading Nassim Taleb's books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan (info at his website http://fooledbyrandomness.com/) along with one he recommends: What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars http://infraredpress.com/ Those will all teach you what not to do, which is just as, if not more important in investing and trading than what to do.
on “Ask HN: Good resources for learning+getting into Finance / Trading?” ↗Here's a key excerpt from What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, basically the book in a nutshell. Forgive the wall of text, but it's worth the read. This starts right after the author finishes recounting how he lost his $1.6M fortune and seat on the Chicago Mercantile…
on “Ask HN: Good resources for learning+getting into Finance / Trading?” ↗…trust and what the signs tell you, than about having any low- or even mid-level technical knowledge. Taleb has this story: "“In one of the rare non charlatanic books in finance, descriptively called What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars, the protagonist makes a big discovery. He remarks that a fellow called Joe Siegel, the most active trader in a commodity called “green lumber” actually thought that it was lumber painted green (rather…
on “Which job skills are most employable?” ↗The book "What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars" tells the opposite of that story - what happens when you misinterpret luck as talent.
on “Bitcoin Traders Claim There’s Method to Their Madness” ↗The book “What I learned losing a million dollars” talks about the difference between trading and gambling in more detail, and it changed the way I think about investing. It’s also just a fun read.
on “Are You Trading or Gambling?” ↗This is one of the author's better posts. Some of it seems reminiscent of Paul & Moynihan's "What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars", particularly the point of confusing rapid success in one area (stocks or poker) with the necessary expertise to invest in a new area (hotels in the blog post, thoroughbred horses in the book). I will…
on “What to do After Making a Billion dollars” ↗…The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm (Dartnell) Historia mínima de España (Fusi) Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders (Marquet) What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars (Moynihan) Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems (Google) Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum (Francis) Operating Systems: Three Easy…
on “Ask HN: What books have you read in the first half of 2016?” ↗>Sellers just have to assume a 10% loss of gross margin due to issues like this. It's not the end of the world, but that's where the cost is. Cost of doing business. Reminds me of the book "What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars" where Jim Paul describes how someone trading in lumber doesn't cry about 20% of the wood being useless, he knows 20% will be useless and he writes that up under cost of doing business. Just like refunds…
on “I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action” ↗This reminds me of the inspiration for the name of Taleb's "green lumber fallacy". From Wikipedia: The term green lumber refers to a story by authors Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan in their book What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars, where a trader made a fortune trading lumber he thought was literally "green" rather than fresh cut.[26] "This gets at the idea that a supposed understanding of an investment rationale, a narrative or…
on “An Interview with an Anonymous Data Scientist (2016)” ↗> What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars, the protagonist makes a big discovery. He remarks that a fellow called Joe Siegel, the most active trader in a commodity called “green lumber” actually thought that it was lumber painted green (rather…
on “CBOE exchange website down minutes after releasing Bitcoin futures” ↗