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Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (3rd Edition)

admin — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:40:36 +0000

Hedge Hogs: The Cowboy Traders Behind Wall Street’s Largest Hedge Fund Disaster

admin — Sun, 19 May 2013 18:02:11 +0000

For readers of The Smartest Guys in the Room and When Genius Failed, the definitive take on Brian Hunter, John Arnold, Amaranth Advisors, and the largest hedge fund collapse in history

At its peak, hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC had more than $9 billion in assets. A few weeks later, it completely collapsed. The disaster was largely triggered by one man: thirty-two-year-old hotshot trader Brian Hunter. His high-risk bets on natural gas prices bankrupted his firm and destroyed his career, while John Arnold, his rival at competitor fund Centaurus, emerged as the highest-paid trader on Wall Street. Meticulously researched and character-driven, Hedge Hogs is a riveting fly-on-the-wall account of the largest hedge fund collapse in history: a blistering tale of the recent past that explains our precarious present . . . and may predict our future.

Using emails, instant messages, court testimony, and exclusive interviews, securities analyst turned investigative reporter Barbara T. Dreyfuss charts the colliding paths of these two charismatic traders who dominated the speculative energy market. We follow Brian Hunter, the Canadian farm boy and elbows-out high school basketball star, as he achieves phenomenal early success, only to see his ambition, greed, and hubris precipitate his downfall. Set in relief is the journey of John Arnold, whose mild manner, sophisticated tastes, and low profile belied his own ferocious competitive streak. As the two clash, hundreds of millions of dollars in pension and endowment money is imperiled, with devastating public consequences.

Hedge Hogs takes you behind closed doors into the shadowy world of hedge funds, the unregulated wild side of finance, where over-the-top parties and lavish perks abound and billions of dollars of other people’s money are in the hands of a tiny elite. Dreyfuss traces the rise of this freewheeling industry while detailing the decades of bank, hedge fund, and commodity deregulation that turned Wall Street into a speculative casino.

A gripping saga peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama, Hedge Hogs is also an important and timely cautionary tale—a vivisection of a financial system jeopardized by reckless practices, watered-down regulation, and loopholes in government oversight, just waiting for the next bust.

Praise for Hedge Hogs

“Clearly and entertainingly told . . . a salutary example of how traders who believe they are super-smart might be nothing more than lucky, and how there is nothing so intoxicating as the ability to speculate with other people’s money.”—The Economist

“[Dreyfuss] does a great job of putting Amaranth’s out-of-control trader into historical context, explaining the blitz of deregulation that set the stage for someone like Hunter to do maximum damage.”—Bloomberg

“A telling insider’s story on how hedge funds are playing high-stakes poker for massive personal profits and stealing the American Dream from average families . . . This is a case study that cries out for tougher crackdowns on the derivatives game.”—Hedrick Smith, author of Who Stole the American Dream?

“The definitive take on the largest hedge fund collapse in history . . . You will not be able to put it down.”—Frank Partnoy, author of F.I.A.S.C.O. and Infectious Greed

“[Dreyfuss’s] work shines light on the little-known sector of unregulated energy trading in the wake of Enron.”—Booklist

Named One of the Top 10 Business & Economics Books of the Season by Publishers Weekly

From the Hardcover edition.

Hedge Hogs: The Cowboy Traders Behind Wall Street’s Largest Hedge Fund Disaster

admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:55:00 +0000

The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess

admin — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:12:48 +0000

The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess

admin — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:56:33 +0000

The Buy Side, by former Galleon Group trader Turney Duff, portrays an after-hours Wall Street culture where drugs and sex are rampant and billions in trading commissions flow to those who dangle the most enticements. A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards – and dizzying temptations – of making a living on the Street.

Growing up in the 1980’s Turney Duff was your average kid from Kennebunk, Maine, eager to expand his horizons. After trying – and failing – to land a job as a journalist, he secured a trainee position at Morgan Stanley and got his first feel for the pecking order that exists in the trading pits. Those on the “buy side,” the traders who make large bets on whether a stock will rise or fall, are the “alphas” and those on the “sell side,” the brokers who handle their business, are eager to please.

How eager to please was brought home stunningly to Turney in 1999 when he arrived at the Galleon Group, a colossal hedge-fund management firm run by secretive founder Raj Rajaratnam. Finally in a position to trade on his own, Turney was encouraged to socialize with the sell side and siphon from his new broker friends as much information as possible. Soon he was not just vacuuming up valuable tips but also being lured into a variety of hedonistic pursuits. Naïve enough to believe he could keep up the lifestyle without paying a price, he managed to keep an eye on his buy-and-sell charts and, meanwhile, pondered the strange goings on at Galleon, where tens of millions were being made each week in sometimes mysterious ways.

At his next positions, at Argus Partners and J.L. Berkowitz, Turney climbed to even higher heights – and, as it turned out, plummeted to even lower depths – as, by day, he solidified his reputation one of the Street’s most powerful healthcare traders, and by night, he blazed a path through the city’s nightclubs, showing off his social genius and voraciously inhaling any drug that would fill the void he felt inside.

A mesmerizingly immersive journey through Wall Street’s first millennial decade, and a poignant self portrait by a young man who surely would have destroyed himself were it not for his decision to walk away from a seven-figure annual income, The Buy Side is one of the best coming-of-age-on-the-Street books ever written.

From the Hardcover edition.

Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives Revised edition

admin — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:53:19 +0000

The Modern Trader: Wall Street Traders Reveal Their Formula for Success

admin — Sun, 05 May 2013 15:11:34 +0000