In the world according to Victor Niederhoffer, life is speculation and we are all speculators, except when we lose - then we are gamblers. We speculate on our careers, relationships, games, and investments. Life-changing decisions hang on our ability to read and anticipate turns of events.

In The Education of a Speculator, Niederhoffer opens the kaleidoscopic story of his life to show how he came to understand these fundamental forces. Offering a way of thinking rather than a "system," this powerful, remarkable book shows us how to speculate and win much more than we ever thought possible.

Niederhoffer shows how, by distilling the lessons of board games, horse racing, and hoodoos, we can achieve the right mental and emotional state before, after, and during a contest. Of course, Niederhoffer's greatest fame (and fortune) is as an extremely successful trader, and here his tips, principles, and methods become most manifest.

Niederhoffer establishes the relationship between stampeding elephants and market behavior, explores the use of musical structure as a guide to trading, and dissects the many roles of deception. In The Education of a Speculator, charts of stock prices are followed by pictures of paintings; the advice of cops, crooks, and Nobel scientists are all juxtaposed and synthesized - all in the service of successful speculation and investment.