RSS
Book Review: An American Hedge Fund
October 8th, 2007 by 
investoid
I was approached by Timothy Sykes, a trader who met with success while he was still in high school, to read a pre-release copy of his book, an An American Hedge Fund
After reading through it, I found that the book is an interesting look at Sykes’ life to date. He made the bulk of his money riding penny stocks during the dot com boom, and subsequently continued to increase his wealth during the bust by shorting the same type of companies he rode on the way up. Eventually Sykes decided to leverage his personal funds into creating a hedge fund. While Sykes goes into detail about how he made his millions, this book is not about the method. It is more of a biography that has some interesting thoughts and lessons for active investors/traders.
For me, the most insightful aspect of his book is how he keeps hammering home the mistakes he made and the psychological traits that were behind his trading decisions. I think this is a crucial aspect for anyone to understand in order to achieve long term success in active investing/trading. Sykes’ no holds barred confessionals made me feel like I’ve learned through his mistakes.
Sykes devotes the last part of the book to his trials and tribulations as a hedge fund manager. He becomes disenchanted with the hurdles that hedge funds face when trying to raise capital, and uses this as motivation to write the book. While I enjoyed reading the ending sequence regarding hedge fund regulations, I thought some more detail would be beneficial (although maybe just an egghead like me wants to know the specifics).
Overall, Sykes has written an engaging book that provides some solid lessons about trading psychology. He has a readable style that makes you want to finish the book as soon as possible.
For more info on Sykes’ new pursuit of investor education on the hedge fund industry, check out his website.
Disclosure: I will be receiving a complimentary copy of the book for my review of his work.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I READ SYKES WORTHLESS BOOK AND IT HAS NO SUBSTANCE. THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER BOOKS THAT COVER THE SAME SUBJECT MATTER FROM PEOPLE WHO HAVE A RIGHT TO EVEN AUTHOR A BOOK ON THE SUBJECT.
THIS WORTHLESS BOOK IS JUST AN ATTEMPT AT COMING UP WITH A CATCHY TITLE TO GENERATE HITS ON A SEARCH ENGINE. SAME OLD TIRED INFORMATION PRESENTED.
SYKES IS A FAILED HEDGE FUND MANAGER, NOW BECOMING A SNAKE OIL BOOK SALESMAN. BOOK NOT WORTH $20.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:25 am
I read Tim Sykes mediocre hedge fund book since I knew him at Tulane, and like him as a person. However, the book is an empty and uninspiring story about how Sykes became a self-absorbed irresponsible stock trader. This book is NOT a “classic” and story is NOT “Rocky-like”(as author Sykes claims). This book is basically like a blog of an average person who got lucky trading stocks and then his luck ran out (which it really should be - blog and nothing more).
Beware of all the phony glowing reviews for Sykes Book. Its the good ole boy network in high gear where authors/investment advisers use the buddy system to give fake good reviews to each other.
Sykes put the term “stock operator” in title in order to confuse all future book searches for Jesse Livermore’s excellent story (Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefèvre (1923)). This cheesy trick might help book sales, but needless to say, Sykes has nothing in common with the great trader Livermore.
Sykes comes across like a hyper/immature/video game player-type Trader, which worked for him for a few years; then the law of averages caught up with him. His “return to the mean” continues during the past two years; and his very poor investment strategies are DOWN -37% since Jan 2006. His continuous bad performance throughout 2007 shows that he does not learn from his mistakes; and readers can only cringe while watching Sykes slow motion demise into a worthless snake oil salesman.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 am
Ok, I just recently learned of this guy, Tim Sykes, and have visited the web site he set up, read his book , and watched a few of his idiotic appearances on various news outlets such as CNBC. This is HILARIOUS.
Tim, if you are reading this, listen up:
Much of what I’ll say is redundant but you know NOTHING about what you claim to know about. You are a rank amateur who has learned enough surface information about an industry so as to come across as being knowledgeable enough about it to teach to others. The only people that take you seriously are complete newcomers to this game that know next to nothing, because to a complete amateur you sound like you know what you are talking about. You have learned enough about trading to pretend and claim to have traded and that’s about it.
Trading your parents money via an online retail account is not a fund, but is laughable. Your story is just that, a story. “I turned my 12k bar mitzvah money into 2 million”. It reads like bad spam I get in my inbox but the journalists eat it up like cake. Your web site is hilarious because you are an enormous idiot and I will continue to visit it for free laughs. I wonder if you know how stupid you are or if you have truly convinced yourself that you have learned something valuable enough to write about?
February 1st, 2008 at 11:18 pm
[…] Investoid Review “…an engaging book that provides some solid lessons.” 10.08.07 HowToMakeAMillonDollars “…inspirational for […]