PRAISE FOR JOEL NELSON AND "STUPID OR LIAR""Not for the ideologically or politically correct, nor for those who think they already understand trading and investing. In between possibly offensive anecdotes are trading insights seldom found in the same place."
- Charles Faulkner, Market Wizard & Trading Coach
"Joel's book is a great overview of the trading and investing industry as a whole. His comments and research on what it truly means to be diversified should be read by every investor and financial advisor in the industry. With so many daily distractions and misrepresentations on what it takes to be a consistent money manager of your personal or your client's assets, this book will give you the truth about the industry and a guideline for how you should trade and allocate your assets going forward."
- Kyle Ferguson, President - Jones Commodities Inc - Commodity Trading since 1984
"If you are intent on following the herd, then don't read this book. But if you think for yourself and make your own investment decisions, then reading Joel Nelson's advice is well worth the time. So read this book carefully and you can't help but become a better investor..."
- John Sherriff, former CEO - Enron Europe & Head Natural Gas Trader, author of Risk, Decisions and Bets for Investors, Traders and Entrepreneurs
"Stupid or Liar" offers some wonderful and alternative hypotheses to "how things work" in alternative investing. This book will make you re-think what you think you know."
- Zhao, private investor, private equity, alternative investments - Hong Kong & China.
"Stupid or Liar" sums up what many of my fellow conspiracy theorist have been asking for years: how can intelligent people in power make such misleading statements to the public? They are totally lying. But why? Because they must be in on it! In the end, it is always about control of money, power and people. The easiest way to control all these things is to control information and truth. That is why transparency is the apocalypse of the current system... and this book is as transparent as it gets..."
- Jonathan Toth - musician & political activist
"With brutal honest, Joel examines investment theories, eloquently explains them using fun analogies, exposes the truth about investing and financial advisors, and offers new, insightful ways of acquiring wealth..."
- Lucie Zdenkova, MBA CPA former financial advisor
ABOUT "STUPID OR LIAR"
Why does the human brain react the same during sex as during market bubbles?
Why is flipping a coin a better bet than trusting a financial advisor?
What can prostitutes teach us about portfolio management?
Why is Warren Buffett a Liar?
Stupid or Liar challenges traditional investment beliefs and shows the dangerous consequences - to our investments and our society - when so many who think they are right...are actually so very wrong.
Nelson pulls no punches while showing the reader the fallacy and hypocrisy of cherished investment sacred cows, ranging from Long Term Capital Management, what you thought you knew about diversification, Modern Portfolio Theory, Warren Buffet and Nobel Prize winning economists.
Irreverent and articulate, Nelson ambitiously - and successfully disproves - the commonly believed, "Efficient Market Hypothesis". Nelson introduces a replacement theory that more accurately explains real world marker mechanics, called the "Feedback Loop Market Hypothesis".
Startling, gritty, and crammed with financial fact, fiction, personal success and failures, "Stupid or Liar?", leaves the reader, wiser, feeling braver and surprising uplifted.
About the Author: Joel T. Nelson has devoted his life to, "risky things". First as a teenager, extreme back country skiing around Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Nelson then moved to Europe, becoming an international racing driver, after being selected as one of the most talented young American racing drivers at the time. It was durning his time winning races in Europe, he also began derivatives trading, and trading system design research. He returned to Lake Tahoe and launched investment fund, Westridge LLC, where he first successfully applied his 'market feedback loop hypothesis' to real estate speculation. Nelson was then fortunate to enjoy years of mentorship by fellow Lake Tahoe resident, and famed systematic commodity trader, Ed Seykota. Nelson credits Seykota with "forcing me to ask the right questions", and "teaching me how to think in terms of systems and not causality". Nelson is a Series 3 licensed Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA), quantitative systematic futures market trader, and founder of Black Lotus Capital (BLC). BLC is a CTA specializing in the customized design and management of quantitatively designed multi-manager CTA portfolios for investors that are, "robust and positively asymmetric to market volatility". He travels around the planet, does yoga, and spends most of his days thinking in seclusion. He enjoys building self contained hydroponic gardening systems, flying airplanes, practicing Buddhism with his Thai Fiancee, and keeping the totality of his worldly possessions limited to what can fit in his backpack. Nelson believes all life decisions are nothing more than small bets, either positively asymmetric or negatively asymmetric, and most people are more certain of everything, than he is of anything.
