Product Description
Even with the recent upheaval and turmoil on Wall Street, it’s still currently estimated that the hedge fund industry exceeds one trillion dollars in assets, and continues to expand. Hedge funds are all over the news, as their managers become multi-millionaires and seemingly come up with new, increasingly ostentatious ways to spend their massive fortunes. And until now, the average investor has been kept out of this world, being led to believe that one needs a MBA from a top university and millions of dollars to invest.
In DO IT YOURSELF HEDGE FUNDS Wayne Weddington, a senior portfolio manager of one of the world’s top hedge funds, demonstrates how one can learn to play this high-stakes game. In these t… More >>
Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds: Everything You Need to Make Millions Right Now
Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds: Everything You Need to Make Millions Right Now
5 Comments
Tags: DoItYourself, Everything, Funds, Hedge, Millions, Need, RightPosted 25 Mar 2010 in General
At first I thought this book may be a little bit dry (because it is a book about hedge funds), but immediately upon opening the book, Mr. Weddington intrigued me with his interesting story about how he felt into finance. I love his short stories. if you think this book is pure finance, you are wrong. It is so much more. I had no clue about hedge funds before. The author gives you a good description on what hedge funds is and it tells you about basic such as what stock or bond is to giving you advices on how to manage you money. Even if you don’t need advice on how to manage your money, you should still read it just so you understand when, where and why certain things in financial world happened. Great book!
Rating: 5 / 5
DIY Hedge Funds is not only informative, it is also interesting to read. In it Weddington gives a complete introduction to hedge fund style investing, starting with an explanation of what a hedge fund is. He explains investment sectors and introduces the reader to the idea that there is a connection between the things going on in the world and the markets, and that the aware among us can prosecute our own investment ideas. He tells us some “secrets” and shows us how today’s markets are dfferent from the markets of ten years ago. For one thing, we have direct access to a vast array of markets through stocks. All in all, there is is a good deal of useful, well organized, information in Weddington’s book.
For those who like stories, DIY Hedge Funds recounts some of Weddington’s own experience in growing up as a fund manager. The stories are intended, it seems, to let us share in the excitement he finds in his work. His love of the art and science of investing comes through. He tells how, after finishing an undergraduate science major at Columbia University and going halfway through NYU Medical School, he found his summer internships at an investment bank so compelling that he resigned from medical school to go to Stanford and get an MBA. It becomes clear as one reads that Mr. Weddington spends a great deal of resources developing sophisticated computer programs with which to ply his craft. He works long hours! And he expects us to believe that a person who needs an explanation of hedge funds, can by reading his book, be prepared to compete in his league! Well.
Though the book’s cover oversells it somewhat (I doubt that this will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know) it is an interesting and useful book that I recommend for serious investors as well as for those who are curious about how serious investors spend their time.
Rating: 4 / 5
I haven’t been this excited by a DIY book since “Do-It-Yourself Biohazardous Waste Disposal” first graced my library a few years ago. Rating: 5 / 5
I bought this book with the expectation that it would teach me the behind the scenes details of hedge funds and also provide the real tools needed to start one, but in the end it is just a very high level guide to macro investment themes, diversification, and elementary valuation. If you have a finance background I would strongly suggest passing on this one and pick a different, more appropriate, book; you learned more in your introduction to finance class. Also, if you are under 30 I would also stay clear as you have probably learned more from watching Cramer on CNBC or just thru general internet use and blog reading. In this book, there is an entire chapter devoted to yahoo finance and where to find financial data and what it means. I am sorry, but if you don’t even know where to find financial data or what an ETF is (which means you have probably never really invested), you should not be worried about “starting your own hedge fund” as this book misleads. You should stick with your day job and keep getting your stocks from “Money” and other sources with conflicting interests.
Of 10 chapters, I found the final 2 the only semi useful ones. The final chapter was more for entertainment value, but it did provide a valuable reminder that everything in life is zero sum and there is no place more zero sum than wall street. The 2nd to last chapter provides some hedge fund strategies and high level differences between them with a couple of examples.
I am sorry, but I really expected more from this book and I can’t say I really took one thing away from it. I kept waiting for the “meat”, but it never came. It is clear that the author targeted the largest audience possible, which would be non-financial main street who are just hearing the term “hedge fund” for the first time.
Disclaimer: I have a finance degree, a finance job, and have worked in a hedge fund before as a bottom of the barrel analyst, so maybe I expected too much, but I really didn’t learn anything from this book and don’t think anyone with any sort of finance background will either. Rating: 1 / 5
The point of this book is to provide the average reader with the tools to start their own hedge fund. I have an MBA in Finance but I actually thought this was one of the best financial books I have read. It is relatively easy to take a complex subject and keep it complex. It took a somewhat complex topic and made it simple. That is the art. In this respect I would compare it favorably to the ‘The little book that beats the market’ by Joel Greenblatt. A must read! Rating: 5 / 5