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Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
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Lewis book is very one sided/biased and tries to categorize an entire industry based upon one (relatively small) strategy.
I believe this is the sixth book Lewis has written about financial markets. While all 6 are entertaining reads, they all have demonized the financial markets. I expect future books will do the same.
For Lewis as a writer, this has been a brilliant strategy, pandering to the reader's prurient interests. It's put him on the top of the heap.
It's kind of like Bear Grylls. I don't remember anything about the episodes of his wilderness survival show -- except the money shot that occurs in every show where he bites into some disgusting insect or eats a snake or bat raw.
"This is the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten. But it's got a lot of protein." He says.
I haven't read through this entire thread to see if this book has been mentioned. But what are some opinions about
"Hedge Fund Market Wizards"
His earlier books seemed to have extremely useful lessons/overall themes, I am not finished with this one yet, but so far it seems great.
This is a very beautiful book on the history of how many of the ideas central to finance came about. No charts, nor formulas, but just a captivating write up from the renaissance period till modern day surrounded by colourful personalities in their individual pursuit of ideas but tied in the randomness of the world and the games of chance. It makes one much more appreciative of the numbers and concepts we use.
One of may favourite excerpts in the book :
"This experiment led Galton to propound a general principle that has come to be known as regression, or reversion to the mean: "Reversion," he wrote, "is the tendency of the ideal mean filial type to depart from the parental type, reverting to what may be roughly and perhaps fairly described as the average ancestral type. If this narrowing process were not at work - if large peas produced ever-smaller offspring - the world would consist of nothing but midgets and giants. Nature would become freakier and freakier with every generation, going completely haywire or running out to extremes we cannot even conceive of."
I was never really that interested in the normal distribution until I saw a Galton quincunx machine. Here's one to enjoy - just mute and play your favourite trading music and hope for the best during the trading day!
I agree, but Scott Patterson's book comes to the same conclusion, see chapter 22 "A RIGGED GAME". I enjoyed the read of both books.
Love that comment!
Of course Lewis is a writer first and the reader is taken out for a walk through the financial landscape. The book points to some flaws of the electronic markets and exaggerates them.
However, the book is informative. I was not aware
- to which extent the stock market is fragmentated
- how the stock markets are now competing for high frequency traders by creating collocation space and admitting dirty order types
- to which the complex order routing can be exploited by "plumbers" under Reg NMS to front run the orders coming from dumb money
- that dumb money now represents the entire buy side
