At first I thought this book became a word of mouth sensation because Traders would be clamoring to understand the incomprehensibility that over 90% of all traders as a whole crash their trading accounts before their first trading anniversary. The ten year survival rate for a trader is abysmally in the single digits. And so begins Taleb’s popular book. But the more I read, the more I realized there was an entirely different appeal, more of a human engagement. Taleb’s position as the Dean’s Professional in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts and as a “mathematical trader” gives him a unique perspective on both intellectual and psychological issues related to the influence of happenstance, skill and luck in our lives and in our trading. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, lavishly endowed with such Talebisms as Europlayboy Mathematics (think James Bond a master of the math odds in casino betting) and vocabulary expanders as Epiphenomena (secondary mental phenomenon that is caused by and accompanies a physical phenomenon), and with a hint global flavor-words such as péché mignon (nice sin), and you get an utterly engaging author style, one that I might call intelligentsia sauvé. If I like the mental stimulation of the author style, I knew I would really like Chapter 11 – Randomness and Our Mind. And I did. His thoughts on how and why our news reaches our bodies before our minds, how our brains would not be able to operate without trading shortcuts, and how our brains cannot optimize every step in life and have built in “stops”, were fascinating. “I’m as good as my last trade”, and 4 other other heuristics that mental reset our reference points was an interesting way to show a scientific approach to unlocking our problem-solving, intuitive, speculative procedures when it comes to trading performance. Also in the process the author offers such psychological insights is that of the “lucky fool” – the trader who happens to be at the right place at the right time, who becomes an instant trading guru. But what has been achieved by chance is not replicable. A successful trader must first and foremost be able to replicate his success, so why must we continually search to find nonexistent messages for ourselves, or meaning in random events, he asks paradoxically. Not a “How To” but more of an engaging exercise in considering the how tos of mentally negotiating trading, this book, although it may not be a mind training textbook, is certainly a hearty mental meal for any intelligent trader.
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