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Eric Wish HONR348M Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/06/2020	Don’t take this class if you want to learn about the stock market. Much of the information in this class is factually incorrect or outdated. At times, it is even misleading. If you take this class, you will walk away with a misunderstanding of the stock market that will hurt you when you begin to trade on your own. The core issue is that this class teaches Technical Analysis (TA). Technical Analysis is a method that uses patterns in stock charts to make educated investment decisions. These patterns are supposed to indicate whether the stock will move up or down. You may have heard of patterns like “head and shoulders”, “cup with handle”, and “bull flag” or indicators like “moving average”, “relative strength”, and “Bollinger bands”. These are terms associated with technical analysis. The problem is technical analysis is a lot like reading tea leaves or looking at horoscopes. It has repeatedly been shown to be an ineffective predictor of stock movement in efficient markets like the US stock market today. TA was viable in the past when trading wasn’t automated, but today, high frequency trading algorithms, which place orders microseconds apart and account for nearly 80% of the volume in a day, have eroded any advantage technical analysis used to have. TA also suffers from double-sided language and non-falsifiable claims. Technical analysts look at chart patterns and make statements like “XYZ stock had a Bollinger Band bounce signaling a reversing downtrend, but its low Relative Strength and high Stochastic could mean a break through resistance to lower lows”. These types of statements are far too common and are essentially saying the price can go up OR down. Later, analysts point to the subsequent stock’s price movement and use hindsight to justify their correctness. Of course, you can’t be wrong if you predicted the stock price would move in either direction. A broad metastudy of 96 papers also concluded that technical analysis has not been demonstrably profitable in equity markets after 1990. Studies that did show profitable strategies in the past still may not have beaten the average market index (SP500) or made questionable methodology decisions in their analysis (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2007.00519.x). These days, successful firms like Citadel, IMC, and 2 Sigma use rigorously proven statistical techniques and machine learning strategies like LSTM and SVM to predict market movement. If you walked into an interview at a hedge fund, trading firm, or investment bank and said you use technical analysis to make investments, they would laugh as they showed you the door. Despite all this, Wish makes TA seem like the be-all-end-all of trading. He talks a lot about his own successful trades. What Wish never does is quantify his strategies with industry metrics like CAGR, Sharpe, Alpha, and Drawdown that normalize the performance of trading across different market conditions. We never know how often he wins or loses, or by how much. Wish also never reveals his trades before he places them. If Wish is teaching us investing strategy, at the very least, he should be able to demonstrate that the technique is successful by providing his historical performance, both the good and the bad. This may seem like a large ask, but it is standard in the industry to have this information publically available. Besides this fundamental issue with the course, there are other minor but notable ones as well. There is a trading simulation in this class in which you spend 8 weeks trading against your classmates. The idea is to apply what you have learned to design your own unique strategy. That’s not what you really get to do because you are required to build your strategy on top of Wish’s restrictive preexisting rules. Also the final paper, a self-evaluation of your strategy, is just busy-work. The paper exceeds 50 pages in length because you have to document the entry date, number of shares, $ profit, and other values for every single trade you made during the simulation. Then, you have to write 3-4 sentences about what you learned from that trade. The final paper was the most boring, tedious assignment I have ever completed at UMD. Finally, the grading policy is pretty arbitrary. Sometimes assignments are point based, while at other times, they are all-or-nothing. You can get 4/5 questions right on an assignment and end up with a 0 on ELMS. The assignment weighting was similarly nonsensical: quizzes were worth 10-20 points while the final paper was worth 1000. In conclusion, in this class, real information is presented in the same way as information that is straight up wrong. A busy student or an inexperienced student isn’t going to be able to fact check every single thing Wish says. That is what makes this class dangerous. For this reason, I recommend avoiding the class entirely.
Eric Wish HONR348M Anonymous 05/23/2020	Not a good professor. Incredibly inconsistent with grading. I understand that reviews in past years are positive, but I took HONR348M in the most recent semester (spring 2020) and can honestly say you don't need to take this class. If you're interested in the content you can just read the books on wishingwealth blog. If you want to have an unfair and inconsistent professor in Dr. Wish by all means take this class. None of these criticisms apply to the teaching assistant David.
Eric Wish HONR348M Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/20/2015	Dr. Wish is a fantastic professor, definitely take this class. Recommendations: 1. During the trading simulation, consider investing some percentage of your $100,000 entirely into ETFs 2. Be honest with yourself. Don't set a haphazard stop loss in the simulation that you would never do in real life! If you treat the money as if it's real, you'll get a better sense of how you'd actually behave in the market with your own investments, and you can tailor your rules to something you would practically use. 3. While you're reading your books, make a TC2000 account and look at real stocks to get a sense of the abstract ideas. I found that I couldn't really grasp the concepts until I started playing around with TC2000. 4. Have the printer situation thought out beforehand. Pretty much everyone in my class wrote a final paper that was above 80 pages, and that's a lot of printing to do if you don't have your own printer or if you're low on color ink. (It doesn't have to be color, but since it will include stock charts, color is preferable.) It seems minor, but it can get you into a lot of trouble if you're working last minute. 5. Don't fear the long final paper that much. It'll have a lot of charts, and you should have a lot to talk about.
Eric Wish HONR348M Expecting an A Anonymous 04/27/2013	Dr. Wish is amazing. Period. This is one of the best classes at the University of Maryland, and I would recommend that everyone take it if possible. Dr. Wish is an excellent teacher who genuinely cares about his students learning the material. The first few weeks can be extremely difficult given the enormous quantities of reading required, but after the gauntlet it gets far better. You must keep up with the readings and market every week to stay ahead, but trust me, it is worth it. I learned so much about stocks, specifically technical analysis, as well as numerous other approaches, and strategies for personal finance. Dr. Wish also brings in a slew of phenomenal guest speakers. Above all, the highlight of the class is the stock competition, which is closely followed each week. This course provided me with several valuable skills that I will keep with me the rest of my life. I love this course and think the world of Dr. Wish. There is definitely a large reward for all of the hard work you put into this class. Make sure you don't put off the final paper, as it's almost all of your grade, and it can be challenging. All in all, most of the class receives A's, but it's not because it's an easy class. Dr. Wish is a great teacher, and inspires us to do learn and to do the work.
Eric Wish HONR348M Expecting an A+ zaqu413 12/22/2012	Take this class! Not only do you learn about the stock market, but you also learn about managing money, which I would have never learned about (I think Business majors learn about this stuff, but I am Math-CS). Readings: This is a very daunting amount of reading in the beginning, but if you can get through that then you will compete in a stock market competition with a fake $100,000. It is definitely worth the reading in the beginning. (I read half the books over the summer before the class started, this is a good idea if you want to be able to finish the readings.) I got a lot out of the readings and would suggest that you try to do most of them. Stock Competition: This part of the course can be a lot or a little work depending on how much you put into it. If you put a lot in you will learn a lot and have a lot to talk about in your final report (which is why I managed an A+). The one thing I liked about this was that you can plan your stock market competition work around the rest of your schedule, just do it at bare minimum once a week (twice is good but more is definitely better, I would do in depth stock market stuff on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and usually glace through stock charts while eating breakfast and dinner). Warnings: Dr. Wish will call you out in front of the entire class if you slack off(like updating your overall market analysis, or updating your transaction sheets). The final assignment took me over 100 pages and an entire weekend, I started Friday afternoon and finished Sunday night and did almost nothing but this project. It is impossible to do the night before and get a good grade. The final project has gotten a shorter than it was in the past, but you now need to be more detailed and analytic. I would suggest reading these three books (in this order) before the semester starts: 1) How I made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market (DARVAS) 2) Stan Weinstein's Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets (WEINSTEIN) 3) Lessons from the Greatest Stock Traders of All Time (BOIK)