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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
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When Genius Failed summary
Roger Lowenstein
The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
19 mins
Brief summary
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein is a non-fiction book that tells the story of the rise and fall of the hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management. It examines the impact of hubris, greed, and flawed investment strategies on the financial markets.
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When Genius Failed
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Long-Term Capital Management was an enormous hedge fund that made its money through arbitrage.
It’s a fair bet that you’ve probably never heard of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a long defunct fund management company. The 1997 Asian financial crisis or the 1998 Russian default, however, are two events that are probably much more familiar to you, as they brought the financial world to the brink of collapse. LTCM had an important role to play in both.
LTCM was a hedge fund founded in 1994 by trader John Meriwether. Hedge funds manage the pooled investments of small groups of mostly wealthy investors. Unlike their cousins, mutual funds, which manage the investments of a larger, more economically diverse group of investors, hedge funds are subject to very little regulation, meaning that there are virtually no limits to the size of the fund or where it can be invested.
This lack of regulation makes hedge funds a ripe environment for investment in riskier financial products, such as derivatives.
Like all other hedge funds, LTCM managed their investments with a strategy called arbitrage, whereby hedge fund managers purchase or sell financial products in the hope or knowledge that their price will change in their favor in the near future.
To demonstrate this, imagine that one company sells different stock in two markets. As both stocks represent the same company, you’d expect them to be the same price. However, sometimes the price of the stock in one market may dip below the other. When this occurs, you have an opportunity to quickly buy this stock before the prices reach equilibrium again, after which you can sell that stock at a profit.
In reality, the dynamics of the market don’t create these clear-cut scenarios. In fact, most arbitrage strategies rely on tiny, rapidly disappearing discrepancies in the price of financial products.
This gave LTCM an advantage. They used academic calculations and predictions as well as the latest computer software to recognize the opportunities and exploit them quickly. Using this strategy, LTCM became the largest hedge fund ever. So what happened?
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What is When Genius Failed about?
When Genius Failed (2001) follows the rise and fall of Long-Term Capital Management, the world’s largest ever investment fund. The book reveals uncomfortable truths about the nature of investment and the fragility of the models we use to assess risk.
Best quote from When Genius Failed
Now that they had the scale to operate worldwide, they had no interest in managing money for others and largely froze them out.
—Roger Lowenstein
Who should read When Genius Failed?
- Anyone interested or working in investment banking
- Anyone interested in risk calculation
- Anyone thinking about investing in a hedge fund
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