A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp, Barton Biggs
A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp, Barton Biggs
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A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp
...Or What's a Heaven For

Author: Barton Biggs

Narrator: Don Hagen

Unabridged: 11 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 01/31/2011


Synopsis

A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp recounts the ecstasy and the agony of investors in the hubris-filled years of the great secular bull market and the terrors of the financial collapse. It is a story of personal and investment triumph and tragedy in the tradition of An American Tragedy and Bonfire of the Vanities. Though the tale is fiction, it is faithful to the actual market events of the decade of hedge fund madness and the ensuing destruction in the great bear market of 2007–2009 and its aftermath.

In A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp, the former top-ranked global strategist for Morgan Stanley, and now a hedge fund manager, expertly weaves fact and fiction to describe how the mysterious world of hedge funds and the people who run them really works. It is the story of how the brilliant but toxic interaction of brains, intensity, raw ambition, hubris, and greed combined with the “perform or perish” creed to fuel the egregious excesses and, eventually, contribute to the bursting of the stock market and financial bubbles. Lifestyles, portfolios, and loves were recklessly leveraged creating stunning excesses, but when the world turned, it wasn’t just proud fortunes that were lost; relationships and souls were ravaged as well. There is a compelling, but tragic, love story here about two people who celebrated love as a solution to spiritual isolation. The novel is also an investment chronicle, a tragic saga of how all brilliant performance is transitory and how, unfortunately, there is no stock market strategy that works forever and that too much money can’t spoil.

The protagonist is Joe Hill, an authentic American hedge fund success story if there ever was one, who came from nowhere, reached for heaven, and momentarily grasped it. Joe Hill isn’t the typical Wall Street whiz kid sporting an Ivy League education. Born on the wrong side of the tracks in rural Virginia, Joe had to work for everything he wanted. And he wanted it all.
A masterful mix of fact and fiction, A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp is the inside, rags-to- riches story of one man’s American dream that became the world’s financial nightmare.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Viktor on January 28, 2018

For someone who has built a career in investing there is a lot to relate to here. The first half is quite slow, but I very much enjoyed the rest of it. Biggs clearly puts realism above intrigue, a big positive for me, but I find it an emotionally engaging read nonetheless. If you're interested in the......more

Goodreads review by Grant on June 17, 2020

Story of a research analyst that turned to portfolio manager of a giant hedge fund through and after 2001 and crashed in 2008. Back to being a simpliton after and shows the effects of personal leverage.......more

Goodreads review by Brian on June 02, 2016

Another good book from Barton Biggs. The author describes the up and down ride of a fictional statistical arbitrage hedge fund manager investing using value with momentum style. The protagonist started his business at perfect time when value style regain its fashion after the tech bubble and went bu......more

Goodreads review by Terry on October 18, 2011

I listened to the unabridged version of this book on audio while driving home from Bend, Oregon. I had also just finished the book, An American Hedge Fund. Mr. Biggs book is a fictional account of a hedge fund that booms and then busts....not an uncommon fate within the hedge fund industry. The stor......more

Goodreads review by Nick on November 27, 2016

For what the book tries to do, it does it very well. Probably the most accurate piece of investment fiction since Edwin Lefèvre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Certainly unsurpassed in terms of the description of quantitative long/short equity investing. But steer clear if you are not a stock m......more