Amos Hostetter cofounded Commodities Corporation (otherwise known as CC) along with Helmut Weymar back in 1969. CC is the trading shop that produced more legendary trading talent than the Yankees have All-Stars. Alumni include: Bruce Kovner, Michael Marcus, Paul Tudor Jones, Ed Seykota and more…

Hostetter was considered the wise sage and mentor of the group. He’s credited with imbuing many of these trading greats with the wisdom and knowledge they used to achieve their grand heights.

Upon his untimely death in a car accident in 1977, the directors of CC commissioned one of their traders, Morris Markovitz, to gather and record Hostetter’s timeless philosophy on markets and trading. The goal was to ensure future CC traders could benefit from his invaluable teachings. The resulting work was an internal booklet titled Amos Hostetter; A Successful Speculator’s Approach to Commodities Trading.

Hostetter’s trading philosophy could be boiled down to the following (in Hostetter’s own words):

He regarded money management as the first priority for any serious market speculator. From Markovitz (emphasis mine):

Sound money management is crucial to successful trading. The best market analysis won’t get a trader to the bottom line — consistent profits — unless he has a sound money-management policy. This is an area where Mr. Hostetter excelled.

Sometimes it is hard to draw a sharp line between trading principles and money-management principles. If I were to paraphrase a famous saying, I think it would provide an accurate summary of one of Mr. Hostetter’s most important trading and money-management principles: the market, to be commanded, must be obeyed. As a trader, Mr. Hostetter was aware of his own fallibility. He tried to protect himself from errors by the trading rules he used and by trying to anticipate areas of potential surprise. This alone, however, was not enough. If the market moved against him for a reason he did not understand, he would often exit without waiting for a trading rule to take him out: as a money manager, he knew he could not afford the luxury of a prolonged argument with the market.

Perhaps his most important money-management principles was “Take care of your losses and the profits will take care of themselves.” This means that a trader should place strong emphasis on keeping his losses small, because two or three large losses in succession would be a crippling blow.

His risk management principle of “taking care of your losses” is similar to Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital: “if we avoid the losers, the winners will take care of themselves.” This truth is the single most important law of speculation. It sounds glib, but cutting your losses and letting your winners run is the most common thread amongst all great traders. If I could travel back in time 15 years, I’d go back and beat this fact into my thick skull… and I’d be much richer today for it.

Hostetter used a multi-pronged approach to assessing markets and potential trades. It’s from him that Michael Marcus likely developed the “Marcus-Trifecta” to gauge markets — looking at “technicals, fundamentals, and market tone”. Here’s an overview of his approach to fundamentals: