When Genius Failed: The Rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management

This book authored by Roger Lowenstein, is a short biography and chronology of an infamous hedge fund.

Background

So before getting into the review of this excellent read we need to understand, what does hedge fund means?

Investopedia defines the term hedge funds as “An aggressively managed portfolio of investments that uses advanced investment strategies such as leveraged, long, short and derivative positions in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns”.

For most of us (read naive to financial jargons), hedge funds would refer to something which creates volatility in the market and most of the times makes our well thought out investment decisions wrong. More >