IN the old days, technical books were read for one's education, but they are so boring that you would fall asleep. You read novels instead for their drama, romance and excitement. In this fast moving world where daily events are more thrilling than fiction, books like More Money than God by Sebastian Mallaby make you want to turn the next page.
Written by a former journalist, who today works for the US Council for Foreign Relations, the book has combined blood and guts story-telling of the hedge fund industry with careful analysis, tracing meticulously how the industry works like Sherlock Holmes. The narrative is so thrilling that when the author described the scene where the hedge funds took down Thailand in 1997, my hair stood on end. I was a ringside witness but I had not known who was doing what and how they did it.
If you want to know how hedge funds sniff out opportunities by talking to honest and nave central bankers who admit that they made policy mistakes and then make more money than God, read this book. It is both a clinical analysis of how hedge funds emerged from nowhere to become the market movers of today, as well as a morality story that raises more questions than it is able to answer. It may not be illegal (at least under existing law) to do a trade that tips a nation into abject poverty because there were tragic policy mistakes, but is it morally right to take home billions by accelerating the process of "creative destruction"?
The central insight of the hedge fund industry is brilliant it is that the academic finance theory is all wrong and we are all naive to believe otherwise. Modern finance theory begins with the assumption that the market is efficient and knows best. The efficient market hypothesis is based on the view that it is not easy to beat the market. ...
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/11/26/business/9978288&sec=business
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