Name: The Quants
ISBN: 9780307453389

The Quants

"Beware of geeks bearing formulas." --Warren Buffett In March of 2006, the world's richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million-dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them. They were accustomed to risking billions. At the card table that night was Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip-smart whiz kid who'd studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT...when he wasn't playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway. With him was Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time. Now he was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth. There too were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life-master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card-counting team. On that night in 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street. Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants.

What Hacker News says

pjmorrisAug 2025

What's funny to me is that, not only is this also how the financial industry is structured, but that a) this is the currently fashionable means of reducing risk and b) it is seen as a feature not a bug.

Citation: Any book about the 2008 financial crisis, or the 1998 crisis, or the 1987 crisis, e.g.

[0] 'The Quants', Scott Patterson

[1] 'When Genius Failed', Lowenstein.

[2] 'Demon of Our Own Design', Richard Bookstaber.

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kristianpOct 2022

William Poundstone, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

Scott Patterson, The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It

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parallel_itemJan 2019

Some finance books I love (and reread frequently). These books are more about characters and stories, more than traditional non-fiction.

My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman

The Quants by Scott Patterson

A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorp

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

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jason_slackApr 2018

Here are the books on my desk:

C++:

"The C++ Programming Language", Stroustrup

"Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++", Stroustrup

Quant:

"Quantitative Trading", Dr. Ernest Chan

"Algorithmic Trading", Dr. Ernest Chan

"Machine Trading: Deploying Computer Algorithms to Conquer the Markets", Dr. Ernest Chan

"Advances in Financial Machine Learning", Marcos Lopez de Prado

"Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (10th edition)", John C. Hull

Buddhism:

"Open Heart, Clear Mind", Thubten Chodron

"Buddhism For Beginners", Thubten Chodron

"Working with Anger", Thubten Chodron

Reading For Pleasure:

"Naked Statistics", Charles Wheelan

"Algorithms to Live By", Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

"Dark Pools"

"The Quants", Scott Patterson

"The Physics Of Wall Street", James Owen Weatherall

Plus some Chinese books, I wont bore with the details, unless anyone wants to know. Fun Fact, while I was in China for 8 weeks in late 2017 I bought 60 Chinese books and stuffed them in a suitcase. It cost me $4,000RMB (~$604 USD) to check all of my stuff and purchases home :-)

The Math books are:

"Discrete math", Susan Epp

"Discrete with Ducks"

various Calc books. If you want to learn math, find books that work for you. We all learn differently here.

My opinion: The Chan books are just amazing. Thought provoking and motivational. I am still reading the Prado book.

My opinion 2: If you ever want to slow down in life and learn what you are about, read about Buddhism. I'm not trying to start a flame war. It just works for me. It isn't being told what to believe because that is the way it is. I feel Buddhism lets me explore myself to find the right answers that work for me. Since studying my anger levels are in check. I am a better Husband. My wife comes first always.

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suh_dudeJan 2018

Id recommend "Dark Pools" and "The Quants" both by Scott Patterson.

"Flash Boys" is a fun read since its written by Michael Lewis(good storyteller) but Ive heard have claim it isnt very accurate.

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JugurthaNov 2016

You might want to take a look at a book entitled "The Quants" by Scott Patterson. He talks extensively about Medallion. Inception, speech recognition people, etc.

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