More money than God
Based on unprecedented access to the industry, including three hundred hours of interviews, economist/journalist Sebastian Mallaby 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 21st century capitalism. Ken Griffin started out trading convertible bonds from his Harvard dorm room; Julian Robertson staffed his hedge fund with college athletes half his age; Paul Tudor Jones posed for a magazine photograph next to a killer shark; Michael Steinhardt was capable of reducing underlings to sobs. Finance professors have long argued that beating the market is impossible, 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.--From publisher description. A window on tomorrow's financial system, this authoritative history of hedge funds spans their origins in the 1960s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007-2009.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
20mentions
7people
2010–2025years
85% recommend15% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For a nice historic perspective on hedge funds and the industry as a whole, read Mallaby's "More Money Than God".
- More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of A New Elite by Mallaby does just that. A quote from the book: Although Weymar looked to his teachers for help in refining his mathematical and computing skills, he was unimpressed by their efficient-market theories. “I thought random walk was bullshit,” he said later. “The whole idea that an individual can’t make serious money with a competitive edge over the rest of the market is wacko.”
- OK, here is one book for you: More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God
My message is this: do not settle for the average - everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, developer, speculator, you just need the drive and to put the hours...
Passive investing for me is a big mistake, because it ignores the risk management, especially for small accounts (less than few millions), people just cannot afford to be losing money for extended periods of time, just look into Japan's Economic Bubble and Nikkei index, every passive investor in it is still at about 50% loss for almost 30 years and counting...
To make money in the stock market, you have to have a system that makes money, not only on the way up, but on the way down as well... For me, personally, my money are too important to leave them to such a "buy and hope" investing strategy...
- I cannot recommend anything concrete, all authors are selling either ideas that do not work anymore or just selling the dream...
No one will publish a working trading strategy and even someone crazy enough to do it, it will be arbitraged pretty quickly...
The best way is to buy stock market data and start testing ideas until you find your edge...
All that said, here are the books I usually recommend, more for motivation and inspiration:
The Asian Saga by James Clavell, reading as a kid on how to rule your life, business and create a dynasty...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga
More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby - on how to rule the world :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God
A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp - basically the father of quant/systematic trading and one of the greatest minds of our time...
- Hey, basically I was always fascinated in the business/stock market even as a kid, so when I grew up and started working (Sysadmin/Security space) I started investing in whatever mutual funds my bank would recommend and it took me few years to realize how bad this investment was with the front/back loads, too many fees, etc... After that I decided to invest myself, so I took the path of reading a lot of useless books on value investing, technical analysis, etc and was sill losing money until I realized, that nobody in tier right mind would publish their trading secrets and even if someone does, all the money pouring into the system will arbitrage it away rather quickly, so all those people are basically making money not from trading, but from selling the dream...
Eventually, I bought data, learned myself how to program with Python (I am not a developer, so my programs are quite rude you might say) and started back testing any trading system I can find, all were losing the the long run, but I got the feeling for the market and started testing my own ideas until I found my edge... Automating it was easy afterwards using the API from discount broker... Hosted in the cloud with redundant servers around the world, and still testing new ideas...
My system does not require daily intervention and does everything (buy, sell, sizing, stops, adjustments, exists) by itself, but I would check the logs once a week to make sure everything is working properly, I do also have monitoring in place to monitor my servers, my API providers, also I sent myself notification after buy, sell and other statistics - maybe a bit overkill, but I am a sysadmin by heart and the email and SMS are free :-)
I would recommend buying some data: the far back you can get, the better, rent small linux VPS, learn some python and start testing, it won't be easy, but if you have interest, it makes a great hobby, and who knows, you might find your edge, sooner than later and it is well worth it, the compounding will generate your FU money, and something you can leave to your kids to run after...
The books I would recommend are more for motivation and inspiration:
The Asian Saga by James Clavell, reading as a kid on how to rule your life, business and create a dynasty...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga
More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby - on how to rule the world :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God
A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp - basically the father of quant/systematic trading and one of the greatest minds of our time...
- All time favorites, books I re read every few years, they are more on the adventure/business/money making side:
Non fiction:
A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/
More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God
Fiction:
The Asian Saga by James Clavell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita
