Publication Date:June 10, 2010 Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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ISBN13: 9781594202551
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Product Description The first authoritative history of hedge funds-from their rebel beginnings to their role in defining the future of finance.
Based on author Sebastian Mallaby's unprecedented access to the industry, including three hundred hours of interviews, More Money Than God tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007- 2009.
Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first century capitalism. Ken Griffin of Citadel started out trading convertible bonds from his dorm room at Harvard. Julian Robertson staffed his hedge fund with college athletes half his age, then he flew them to various retreats in the Rockies and raced them up the mountains. Paul Tudor Jones posed for a magazine photograph next to a killer shark and happily declared that a 1929- style crash would be "total rock-and-roll" for him. Michael Steinhardt was capable of reducing underlings to sobs. "All I want to do is kill myself," one said. "Can I watch?" Steinhardt responded.
Finance professors have long argued that beating the market is impossible, and yet drawing on insights from physics, economics, and psychology, these titans have cracked the market's mysteries and gone on to earn fortunes. Their innovation has transformed the world, spawning new markets in exotic financial instruments and rewriting the rules of capitalism.
More than just a history, More Money Than God is a window on tomorrow's financial system. Hedge funds have been left for dead after past financial panics: After the stock market rout of the early 1970s, after the bond market bloodbath of 1994, after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, and yet again after the dot-com crash in 2000. Each time, hedge funds have proved to be survivors, and it would be wrong to bet against them now. Banks such as CitiGroup, brokers such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, home lenders such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, insurers such as AIG, and money market funds run by giants such as Fidelity-all have failed or been bailed out. But the hedge fund industry has survived the test of 2008 far better than its rivals. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.
Can't put this down once you start itSeptember 5, 2010 Joseph Nowoslawski I have seen write ups on various hedge fund folks over the years and this book puts them all into perspective. It is a must read for anyone who handles money in this decade.
Extremely easy to read. Great book.
Well Worth ReadingSeptember 4, 2010 Sambo Gonzales(Undisclosed Location) This is a good book and well worth reading. For myself, there was only one reason to read this book and that was to obtain more information on the Medallion methodology. The author does provide information that hitherto was not public. For this I am grateful, but I would have liked, even more, a really deep interview with the various individuals involved in the development of Medallion.
For example, Berlekamp presents himself, on his website, as the creator of Medallion and the solver of its trading problems. He kicks himself for selling his share of this cash-generating marvel to the ruthless Medallion Pool Operator Owner for only six times the amount he had invested. I guess his intense need to play Dots and Boxes just overwhelmed his common sense.
An interview with the two Russians who thumbed their noses at the Pool Operator Owner would have been most interesting especially since they claim that there are illegal trading activities taking place.
Henry Laufer is stated to be the discoverer of the critical trading strategy currently used by Medallion but there was no interview with him. Were these professionals too terrified of retribution by the Pool Operator Owner to speak their mind?
Why did Nick Patterson quit and leave Medallion? His reasons would have been illuminating. Why did Peter Weinberger up and quit after holding the position of Chief Technology Officer? Why has Robert Frey pulled the pin?
The author discloses the disgusting hypocritical behavior of a famous eConomist (accent on the Con) who teaches his students to follow Fama's ridiculous Efficient Market Hypothesis during the day while secretly investing in Warren Buffett's Berkshire at night.
The book reveals the interviews the author has had with the various members of the hedge fund menagerie, such as 2-Door, Davy Unicorn, Soros and his Reflexivity thing, James Robertson, Bruce Kovner and others. An entertaining tome, to be sure.
Good Overview of hedge fund industryAugust 30, 2010 M. Swanson(Virginia) 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
More Money Than God is one of the top ten best selling investment books on Amazon right now. Half of the book is a history of the hedge fund industry while the rest of the book looks at their role in the investment world both good and bad. Although the whole book is written in a narrative style I noticed this pivot about half way through it.
The author spent thousands of hours interviewing some of the top hedge fund players and his hard work shows. This is the best book I've read on the topic of hedge funds. It shows you how the industry started out with the first hedge fund created by Alfred Winslow Jones and continues up until the present day, with a penetrating discussion of the financial crisis, and interesting studies of the biggest and most successful hedge fund managers in between, such as George Soros, Michael Steinhardt, Julian Robertson, and Paul Tudor Jones.
Mallaby asserts that hedge funds are not the big villain that people make them out to be. In contrast with the big banks that had to be bailed out hedge funds did not need to be bailed out in the financial crisis. Mallaby believes that the best and brightest managers run hedge funds and unlike banks they put the bulk of their own money into the funds themselves so that the managers interests are totally aligned with their investors. If their investors lose money than they will lose too.
This stands in start contrast to the Wall Street banks which saw management awarded with giant bonuses even after the banks they supposedly were managing went under and even after the trillion dollar government bailout was rushed into law over a terrified and manipulated body politic.
What is more hedge funds - except for the exception of Long-Term Capital Management - are never too big to fail.
If you spend some time reading Mallaby's book you'll get a good idea of the secrets behind the most successful hedge fund managers. People look at them in awe and think of them as total genius, but one thing worth nothing is that none of them were right all of the time. All of them had a year or two when they were positioned incorrectly or else made the wrong bet at some time or another - and these are the best of the best. But what they all had was longevity and perserverance and knew how to take advantage of things when they were right.
A gripping hedge fund history lessonAugust 30, 2010 Rolf Dobelli(Switzerland) 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As hedge funds increase in size, variety and number, they also exercise growing power over central banks and national governments, as well as companies and industries. Unfettered by a fixed investment philosophy, hedge fund managers bank on the flexibility to buy assets and sell them short as dynamic markets dictate. Some hedge funds have succeeded spectacularly and some have failed, such as those holding too many mortgage securities when the U.S. housing industry collapsed in 2007. But over its history, the hedge fund industry's performance has been remarkably good. Here, business journalist Sebastian Mallaby forcefully argues that hedge funds contribute to economic stability by chasing the true value of mispriced assets. His richly detailed book centers on the successes and occasional missteps of famous hedge fund managers, including such luminaries as Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones II, Michael Steinhardt, Julian Robertson and George Soros. getAbstract recommends this book as a vivid introduction to hedge funds for those who are unfamiliar with them, and as a valuable, often entertaining, reference for financial professionals. And if you want to know even more, read the illuminating footnotes.
Not great but an interesting readAugust 24, 2010 DoubleA 0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Not sure why others are fawning over this book. Mallaby spends 90% of the book detailing 12 or so of the most famous hedge fund operators and how they amassed their fortunes. While their stories are interesting, they have been well-told and are available in simple internet searches. I didn't feel Mallaby was bringing any new information to light.
The author does touch on all the salient points as to why hedge funds are not evil (as the press would have you believe). Still, I was hoping for more from this book than just a history lesson on the industry's most famous participants.
