Confidence Game

Author: Christine S. Richard
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118010418
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
An expose on the delusion, greed, and arrogance that led to America's credit crisis The collapse of America's credit markets in 2008 is quite possibly the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history. Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff is the story of Bill Ackman's six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5 trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1 billion when bond insurers kicked off the collapse of the credit markets. Unravels the story of the credit crisis through an engaging and human drama Draws on unprecedented access to one of Wall Street's best-known investors Shows how excessive leverage, dangerous financial models, and a blind reliance on triple-A credit ratings sent Wall Street careening toward disaster Confidence Game is a real world "Emperor's New Clothes," a tale of widespread delusion, and one dissenting voice in the era leading up to the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression.

Quality of Earnings

Author: Thornton L. O'glove
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684863758
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
From Simon & Schuster, Quality of Earnings is an investor's guide to how much money a company is really making. From Thornton L. O'glove, Quality of Earnings is an indispensable guide to determining how much money a company is really making and for buying and selling stocks without making costly blunders.

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue

Author: David Einhorn
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470481544
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Book Description
A revealing look at Wall Street, the financial media, and financial regulators by David Einhorn, the President of Greenlight Capital Could 2008's credit crisis have been minimized or even avoided? In 2002, David Einhorn-one of the country's top investors-was asked at a charity investment conference to share his best investment advice. Short sell Allied Capital. At the time, Allied was a leader in the private financing industry. Einhorn claimed Allied was using questionable accounting practices to prop itself up. Sound familiar? At the time of the original version of Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story the outcome of his advice was unknown. Now, the story is complete and we know Einhorn was right. In 2008, Einhorn advised the same conference to short sell Lehman Brothers. And had the market been more open to his warnings, yes, the market meltdown might have been avoided, or at least minimized. Details the gripping battle between Allied Capital and Einhorn's Greenlight Capital Illuminates how questionable company practices are maintained and, at times, even protected by Wall Street Describes the failings of investment banks, analysts, journalists, and government regulators Describes how many parts of the Allied Capital story were replayed in the debate over Lehman Brothers Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is an important call for effective government regulation, free speech, and fair play.

More Money Than God

Author: Sebastian Mallaby
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408809753
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Book Description
Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge-find managers have emerged as the stars of twenty-first century capitalism. Based on unprecedented access to the industry, More Money Than God provides the first authoritative history of hedge funds. This is the inside story of their origins in the 1960s and 1970s, their explosive battles with central banks in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally their role in the financial crisis of 2007-9. Hedge funds reward risk takers, so they tend to attract larger-than-life personalities. Jim Simons began life as a code-breaker and mathematician, co-authoring a paper on theoretical geometry that led to breakthroughs in string theory. Ken Griffin started out trading convertible bonds from his Harvard dorm room. Paul Tudor Jones 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. A saga of riches and rich egos, this is also a history of discovery. Drawing on insights from mathematics, economics and psychology to crack the mysteries of the market, hedge funds have transformed the world, spawning new markets in exotic financial instruments and rewriting the rules of capitalism. And while major banks, brokers, home lenders, insurers and money market funds failed or were bailed out during the crisis of 2007-9, the hedge-fund industry survived the test, proving that money can be successfully managed without taxpayer safety nets. Anybody pondering fixes to the financial system could usefully start here: the future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.

The Alpha Masters

Author: Maneet Ahuja
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118971175
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
The ultimate behind-the-curtain look at the hedge fund industry, unlocking the most valuable stories, secrets, and lessons directly from those who have played the game best. Written by Maneet Ahuja, the hedge fund industry insider, The Alpha Masters brings the secretive world of hedge funds into the light of day for the first time. As the authority that the biggest names in the business, including John Paulson, David Tepper, and Bill Ackman, go to before breaking major news, Ahuja has access to the innermost workings of the hedge fund industry. For the first time, in Alpha Masters, Ahuja provides both institutional and savvy private investors with tangible, analytical insight into the psychology of the trade, the strategies and investment criteria serious money managers use to determine and evaluate their positions, and special guidance on how the reader can replicate this success themselves. There are few people with access to the inner chambers of the hedge fund industry, and as a result it remains practically uncharted financial territory. Alpha Masters changes all that, shedding light on star fund managers and how exactly they consistently outperform the market. The book: Contains easy-to-follow chapters that are broken down by strategy--Long/Short, Event Arbitrage, Value, Macro, Distressed, Quantitative, Commodities, Activist, pure Short, Fund of Funds. Includes insights from the biggest names in the trading game, including Ray Dalio, Marc Lasry, Jim Chanos, Sonia Gardner, Pierre Lagrange, and Tim Wong. Features contributions from industry icon Mohamed El-Erian Many of the subjects profiled in this groundbreaking new book have never spoken so candidly about their field, providing extremely provocative, newsworthy analysis of today's investing landscape.

Liar's Poker

Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039333869X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
The author recounts his experiences on the lucrative Wall Street bond market of the 1980s, where young traders made millions in a very short time, in a humorous account of greed and epic folly.

Lords of Finance

Author: Liaquat Ahamed
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594201820
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Book Description
Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.

Creating Strategic Value

Author: Joseph Calandro
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550677
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
The principles of value investing have resonated with savvy practitioners in the world of finance for a long time. In Creating Strategic Value, Joseph Calandro Jr. explores how the core ideas and methods of value investing can be profitably applied to corporate strategy and management. Calandro builds from an analysis of traditional value investing concepts to their strategic applications. He surveys value investing’s past, present, and future, drawing on influential texts, from Graham and Dodd’s time-tested works to more recent studies, to reveal potent managerial lessons. He explains the theoretical aspects of value investing-consistent approaches to corporate strategy and management and details how they can be successfully employed through practical case studies that demonstrate value realization in action. Calandro analyzes the applicability of key ideas such as the margin-of-safety principle to corporate strategy in a wide range of areas beyond stocks and bonds. He highlights the importance of an “information advantage”—knowing something that a firm’s competitors either do not know or choose to ignore—and explains how corporate managers can apply this key value investing differentiator. Offering expert insight into the use of time-tested value investing principles in new fields, Creating Strategic Value is an important book for corporate strategy and management practitioners at all levels as well as for students and researchers.

The Lost Bank

Author: Kirsten Grind
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451617933
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
Based on reporting for which the author was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award, this book traces the rise and spectacular fall of Washington Mutual.

Trading and Exchanges

Author: Larry Harris
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 9780195144703
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 664

Book Description
Focusing on market microstructure, Harris (chief economist, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) introduces the practices and regulations governing stock trading markets. Writing to be understandable to the lay reader, he examines the structure of trading, puts forward an economic theory of trading, discusses speculative trading strategies, explores liquidity and volatility, and considers the evaluation of trader performance. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).