The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It Pdf, Epub, Ebook
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THE QUANTS: HOW A NEW BREED OF MATH WHIZZES CONQUERED WALL STREET AND NEARLY DESTROYED IT PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Scott Patterson | 337 pages | 02 Feb 2011 | Random House USA Inc | 9780307453389 | English | New York, United States The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It PDF Book Scott Patterson The Quants Similar books. Paulso… More. The only interesting figures in the book, Thorp, Shannon, Mandelbrot, Farmer and Taleb were only given minor attention. Shelve A Man for All Markets. Original Title. Most books which detailed the Great Recession of has basically restated the same thing, in almost the same refrain that its author knew that the world was running blindfolded towards a speeding train. I'm glad I didn't bother reading any of these reviews Patterson appears to lay the primary blame for the panic at the feet of the quants. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove th… More. Yes, default models are based on history, and it is true that modelers now understand that the fourth component can blow out and bonds may trade like stock, regardless of the fair value of the underlying cashflows, making modeled prices at that point irrelevant. Sep 25, Phil Simon rated it really liked it Shelves: business. It's a great backstory that walks you through the original algorithmic traders on wall st and how their quantitative analysis strategies evolved from trying to beat the dealer at blackjack or game the roulette wheel, to running the world's financial markets. The book describes the world of quantitative analysis and the various hedge funds that use the technique. Patterson has a good writing style and the story moves along at a decent clip. The writing is hackneyed. Skip to content. On March 5, , at A. But the hedge funds were the guys who did much of the risky gambling that wiped out trillions of dollars of the nation's wealth. The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable-to-mere-mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. But it's not even a narrative, let alone one supported by evidence. Want to Read. Luckily there are other books out there that do just that. When to market behaved less rational, the flaws in their models beca the quants- hedge funds guys with high level phd's in mathematics built financial models; spectacular gains especially Ken Griffen of Citadel at first, then everything fell apart during the credit crunch and great recession. The influence of the ruble on the real estate market in the US is a subject that has just begun to be explored. As confidence in these now shaky investments fell, creditors demanded more collateral, a margin call, from firms holding them, forcing the debtor firms to raise more money by selling assets. Scott Patterson. In all, this book is an adequate narrative of how quantitative analysts and their creations came to become such an integral and potentially dangerous part of the global financial system. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who finds soundbite media coverage of the economy lacking, and instead would like a more in-depth account of precisely what might have gone wrong in our economic systems over the past 5 years, or past 50 years if we really start to interrogate the genealogy of the present problems. An enduring masterpiece of investigative… More. In that case, we can't However, this is the brilliance of Patterson that he had dug out details hitherto unknown. Details if other :. This book is pretty dense. Patterson is a gifted writer and I I've read more than a few books on Wall Street's latest fiasco. I enjoyed reading about the mathematics of Brownian Motions, fractals, or about Mandelbrot and how they impacted the new financial modeling on top of statistics. Aug 11, Taty K rated it liked it Shelves: economics-finance. The work by Mandelbrot who predicted this years before and Nassem Nicolas Taleb who has been vocal about the excesses of the Quants, play a minor role too. A great insight into the lives and businesses of some of the most important personalities of the hedge fund industry , from AQR to Citadel among others etc.. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. But on the other hand, they seem to have been mathematical lemmings. It is not likely that exogenous variables can be incorporated into any useful model. This is merger arbitrage, and it is not rocket science. In My Life as a Quant, Emanuel Derman relives his exciting journey as one of the first high-energy particle physicists to migrate to Wall Street. Shelve Hedge Fund Market Wizards. The introduction to The Quants describes the real- life, annual, high-stakes poker match between Wall Street's hedge fund managers, comparing their trading styles to their poker strategies. The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It Writer View all 4 comments. Instead they were really very accurate, which is a large part of the problem and caused a bit of a selffulfilling prophecy. It's a search for Lots Of Little Oopses. In The New Market Wizards, successful traders relate the financial strategies that have rocketed them to success. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. A good starting point for anyone who wants to understand the history of quants. Yes the collateral is garbage but statistically only half or less of it, and that is key. Haelfix says:. This caused a panic, which triggered more rapid selling and more models to trigger selloffs too much redundancy on systems that are too similar. When these bets payed off, the outcome was large profits. He is a genius. T… More. It probably really depends on what you enjoy reading: I did like the background storytelling of Ed Thorp, Beat the Dealer, and the very early beginning of mathematics on Wall Street. Starting in late they were experiencing sigma events every week. In both cases the authors picked an inherently exciting topic; let the excitement tell itself and spend your energy telling us things we don't know rather than trying to inject more adrenaline into it. This is the exact opposite of a search for The Truth. Chris Oakley says:. Patterson has a good writing style and the story moves along at a decent clip. With regards to complex financial instruments such as collateralized debt obligations and other mortgage backed securities, they assumed that bundling a group of mortgages into a single instrument would spread out the risk associated with a single borrower failing to pay, failing to consider dynamics that could cause multiple borrowers to fail to pay. At that point, you had firms that had been basing a large percentage of their forecasting and risk assessment on these things, all of a sudden lose complete predictive power. And if you don't know about the quant kerfuffle, why on earth would you want to? One mathematician at the fund may have succumbed to the pressure on March 1, It's a great backstory that walks you through the original algorithmic traders on wall st and how their quantitative analysis strategies evolved from trying to beat the dealer at blackjack or game the roulette wheel, to running the world's financial markets. SteveM says:. But instead I wasted my time on this garbage. Sep 25, Phil Simon rated it really liked it Shelves: business. They also had well defined regimes of applicability where the model was supposed to be valid. The book is easy to read and the author is very capable in making his point. But the hedge funds were the guys who did much of the risky gambling that wiped out trillions of dollars of the nation's wealth. Towards the end, I am not even sure what the overall narrative was supposed to be. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. The LTCM predictive models did not account for the collapse of the ruble. Sometimes less is more. Patterson just couldn't make them into figures that you want to root for or root against. On the financial industry scale though, all these numbers would be rounding errors…. He left behind a six-year-old son named Arthur. Mar 06, Luaba rated it it was amazing Shelves: science. I agree with Peter that the quants who did the real damage were not these relative small-time gamblers, but those whose models gave AAA ratings to horse-excrement sub-prime mortgage bonds. A lot of hedge funds loaded up on A-like bonds when they got spectacularly cheap, priced way below their fundamental value. Computer algorithmic trading systems have depreciated the traditional wall st trader. This seemed kind of repetitive and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who doesn't want to read all about stock market analysis and formulas and their creators. I enjoyed the characters in the book but the last half of the book felt like I knew what was going to happen and just felt like it was lot of fluff. The influence of the ruble on the real estate market in the US is a subject that has just begun to be explored. The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It Reviews While I liked Lewis' book a bit more, the Quants more than holds its own.