Book cover of Hedge Hogs: The Cowboy Traders Behind Wall Street's Largest Hedge Fund Disaster

Book description

For readers of The Smartest Guys in the Room and When Genius Failed, the definitive take on Brian Hunter, John Arnold, Amaranth Advisors, and the largest hedge fund collapse in history

At its peak, hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC had more than $9 billion in assets. A few weeks later,…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Hedge Hogs as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A relatively new arrival on the list, Dreyfuss’s diligently crafted book is the most in-depth look at one of Wall Street’s most spectacular, if lesser-known, collapses in 2006.

The book takes us through the rise of two forces in energy trading embarking on a collision course that would be the ruin of one and an immense windfall of the other. Amaranth hedge fund was an up-and-comer and darling of the hedge fund space. Boasting stellar returns on its several billion in capital, it was able to raise massive sums to hand over to its wunderkind energy trading guru, the Canadian…

As opposed to another “teach me how to trade” book, Hedge Hogs is the entertaining cautionary tale of Brian Hunter and his failure to manage risk at Amaranth (one of the largest commodity trading hedge funds until its demise in 2006). The book also showcases the trader that was “generally” on the other side of Amaranth’s bullish bets in natural gas, John Arnold of Centaurus Capital. Although this book won’t help you develop the casino paradigm as a speculator, it teaches valuable lessons of modelling for liquidity risk as well as not allowing a single opinion (namely, that natural gas…

From Richard's list on for trading like a casino.

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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