When Genius Failed

I would advice people to not read it for fun, because it is not a fun read. It would make better sense to people having a background in finance or genuine interest in finance along with its knowledge. Roger Lowenstein has put a commendable effort in knitting the story. More than finance lessons, they are some memorable life lessons. The book would expose the reader to the wall street of the 90s and some behind the curtain workings of the finance world.ONLY read it if you have idea about finance. Otherwise you may not enjoy and appreciate it.

book good quality of print bad

If you are finance student and single most important thing you can take away from this book is markets are correlated one way or the other. Hotshots of LTCM who conveniently displayed ignorance by being too naive about rational judgement, egotistic attitude in their own intellectual faculty rightfully bought down to earth.Fascinating story about how the whole saga played down. If you are hooked, you can finish the book in 12 hours worst come worst in a day.A must to keep your feet on the ground irrespective of intellectual heights you may achieve.

Should be read by all market participants ,students, book lovers. Several times in history of financial market it has been seen how best of fund manager can go wrong and how liquidity of a product can solely determine the price of an instruments. Excessive leverage used for investing in best research product may proof profitable for most of the times, but if it goes wrong once it can have acute placebo effect wiping best of funds. Big funds have failed most of the times not because of profitability, but for want of liquidity to sail themselves through crises, the investments they possessed to trade simply didn't have liquidity. Excellent piece of work.

This is an excellent read and the author traces the rise and fall of the highly vaunted investment management firm: Long Term Capital Management. The book is a master class on how hubris, overconfidence and greed led to the collapse of a firm that like Titanic was regarded as failure proof. The firm had many things going for it: top calibre team, great leader in John Merriwether and acclaimed financial wizards including Nobel Prize winners. Like Titanic, despite all things going for it and spectacular initial success, Long Term Capital Management had to be bailed out by its banking partners and is a classic lesson in Behavioural Finance

The book conveys the message very well that mathematical models based on past data do not adequately predict the future, and excessive leverage will lead to financial ruin. But it goes into unnecessary details such as the childhood histories of the primary players and their personal traits. And there is quite a bit repetition - some information is presented multiple times with little rephrasing. Writing style is a bit dull. People not well versed in finance may be bored into quitting by the dull writing style.

A masterful description of the greatest individual collapse of all time. Fact paced, racy, detailed and a comprehensive book. Must for anyone who feels a genius in fiancial markets.

This is a really well written book. While it's a case study of the rise and fall of the LTCM hedge fund, it reads more like a thriller with good character development and I couldn't put it down.If you have an understanding of finance especially stocks, bonds and derivatives, you will enjoy it more as it covers the specifics of the speculation done by LTCM and the challenges faced in sufficient detail.Certainly a must read.