Jack Schwager on Timeless Lessons from Elite Traders

Jack Schwager joins Excess Returns to discuss Market Wizards: The Next Generation and the extraordinary young traders profiled in the newest installment of the Market Wizards series.
He explains how traders turned small accounts into fortunes, survived devastating losses, built exceptional risk-adjusted records and adapted from day trading to longer-term strategies, while revealing the psychology, risk management and commitment behind elite trading performance.
Jack Schwager on X
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Market Wizards: The Next Generation
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Topics covered
• How video games, prop trading firms and modern technology shaped a new generation of traders

• How Jack Schwager finds candidates and verifies extraordinary trading track records

• Why return-to-risk measures can reveal more than the Sharpe ratio

• Lukas Froelich's astonishing 2020 performance and the limits of compounding and scalability

• Simon Rousseau's journey from a $40,000 borrowed account to nearly $500 million

• How breaking risk rules led to massive losses even after extraordinary success

• Kristjan Kullamägi's path from security guard to more than $100 million after repeated account blowups

• Phil Goedeker's success with short selling, option selling and unusually strong risk control

• Rick Bandazian Jr.'s merger arbitrage edge and more than a decade without a losing month

• Why financial markets may remain uniquely difficult for artificial intelligence to solve

• Lance Breitstein's apprenticeship, deliberate practice and shift from day trading to longer-term positions

• What traders and long-term investors can learn about talent, discipline, persistence and human nature

Timestamps
00:00 Intro to Market Wizards: The Next Generation
04:33 How Jack finds exceptional traders and how the trading ecosystem changed
09:15 Auditing Lukas Froelich's extraordinary 2020 returns
14:03 Simon Rousseau: turning $40,000 into nearly $500 million
18:42 The $50 million Carvana loss and the danger of breaking trading rules
22:54 Kristjan Kullamägi: from security guard to more than $100 million
28:36 Phil Goedeker and the risk of negative asymmetry strategies
32:41 Hedging option risk during the Liberation Day market selloff
37:34 Trading personality and Rick Bandazian Jr.'s no-loss record
41:36 Can artificial intelligence ever become a Market Wizard?
45:42 Lance Breitstein: choosing mentorship over a higher salary
49:42 What long-term investors can learn from elite traders
53:52 Innate talent, human nature and all-consuming commitment
57:58 What the next generation of trading may look like
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No information discussed in this podcast should be construed as investment advice. Securities discussed may be held by the hosts and guests, their firms or their clients.