Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager
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Product Description
A fast–paced ride through the world of hedge funds revealing the unvarnished truth of how Wall Street really operates, and how to use this to your advantage
An insider′s view of the high stakes world of money management, Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager is both a practical guide for investors and the deeply personal story of a man who knows the system inside and out. One of the best young portfolio managers on Wall Street, and helping to run the hedge fund operation of one of the world′s most prestigious firms, Keith McCullough finds himself a lone voice of reason as the economic crisis of 2008 looms large. Shown the door, his life takes a fascinating turn into the world of independent research and no–holds–barred criticism.
- Reveals the unvarnished truth of how Wall Street and hedge funds really operate
- Deftly details how to analyze the markets expertly and avoid group think using technical and fundamental measures
- Each topic is thoroughly discussed and followed up with lessons you can take away and put to use
Written with the authority of someone who knows how Wall Street and hedge funds work, yet accessible to even a casual follower of finance, Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager mixes a constructive critique of the investment industry with fundamental lessons that any investor will find valuable.
From the Inside Flap
Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager is an insider′s view of the high–stakes money management world. In a distinctly straightforward and, at times, humorous style, Keith McCullough and Rich Blake take you on the journey of a young and successful hedge fund manager and former junior hockey player from Thunder Bay, Ontario, as he gets recruited to the Ivy League, stumbles onto the nexus of the hedge fund universe, and then gets a crack at running his own pile—becoming one of the best young portfolio managers on the Street.
But when the young portfolio manager finds himself working for one of the world′s most prestigious firms—helping to run their hedge fund operation just as the market is starting to crack in 2007—McCullough becomes a lonely voice of reason in a world that rewards groupthink and disregards the adage about past performance having no bearing on future results. When McCullough finds himself shown the door, the story takes a fascinating turn into the world of independent research and no–holds–barred criticism.
Page by page, this fast–paced ride through the world of hedge funds reveals the unvarnished truth of how Wall Street and hedge funds really operate and offers real–world investment lessons you can take away and put to good use.
Written with the authority of someone who knows how Wall Street and hedge funds work, yet accessible to even a casual follower of finance, Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager mixes a constructive critique of the investment industry with fundamental lessons that any investor will find valuable.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Diary of an HF Manager is an easy read, and the image of Keith McCullough that emerges is of a likable man very much representing that section of Americans who emerge from the sports fields as sane-thinking and uncomplicated humans with an ambitious streak. If you are not in finance yourself, and have not read much of the recent avalanche of "financial disaster" books, then this is a good place to start. However, Keith's journey through finance is indeed quite typical, and the book is short of new insights into the way the finance industry operates or what is to become of its (younger) participants after the massive losses of money, pride, and intellectual certainty that befell them in 2008 and 2009.
Format:Hardcover
Agree with the previous review, whereby the book details the route of a highly driven sports jock who makes it into and excels ih the hedge fund world. Very likeable chap. What is interesting about the book is the path he has taken since leaving a hedge fund and not necessarily the HF business itself. This why i really liked the book and what makes it relatively unique and differentiates it from the deluge of HF Books. Blogging, community / membership sites, online marketing, webinars and info-mmarketing. The author now uses these tools to educate the masses as to how they can trade Global Macro profitably - great example of how to effectively use and profit from Info-marketing Resources and Tools.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
34 reviews
19 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Hard work and thinking for yourself
13 Mar 2010
Format:Hardcover
This book provides some interesting insights into the world of funds management.
There are many factors that influence success in this business. I will focus on four factors highlighted in this book.
1. Hunger to win - many people think they have this, but a true hunger to win is driven by an innate competitive drive. And it is a drive to win, not a drive to merely compete, and shouldn't be confused with a drive to gain recognition or status. There is a great scene in the book where the author is interviewing for a graduate job at (the now defunct) Lehman Brothers. He asks '"Do you have a ball?" The Lehman Brothers executive met my question with a blank stare... the guy looked at me like I had just made a rude comment about his wife... "A ball?" he asked. "What do you mean?"... "That thing you throw. Tennis ball, soccer ball, any ball. Do you have one?"... The whole exchange had started with him asking me why I believed I was Lehman material... I told him "If you took every college recruit here, put us all in a room, and then shut the doors and turned off the lights, so it was pitch black, and then threw the ball in the room for us to chase around... I can guarantee you.. that I'd be the one coming out of there with the ball."' He was offered the job.
2. Hard work - there are a lot of smart people in funds management, but not all of them work hard. The author recognized this and one of the things he decided to do was to work harder than his competition. Everyday.
3. Independent thought - it is not enough to simply follow the trend, be one of the heard. As the saying goes "the trend is your friend until the bend at the end". Well it's the bend at the end where all the action happens; where fortunes are won and lost. If you're not thinking for yourself, then it is likely that you will get crushed. However, thinking for yourself can result in situations where your view is the minority view. And if it relates to a situation that only resolves itself in the long-term, then you end up holding a minority view for the majority of time. This is a difficult position for many people to put themselves in because they will be constantly derided by the majority of their peers for the majority of the time. Which is why you need...
4. Emotional resilience.
An enjoyable book that is highly recommended.
There are many factors that influence success in this business. I will focus on four factors highlighted in this book.
1. Hunger to win - many people think they have this, but a true hunger to win is driven by an innate competitive drive. And it is a drive to win, not a drive to merely compete, and shouldn't be confused with a drive to gain recognition or status. There is a great scene in the book where the author is interviewing for a graduate job at (the now defunct) Lehman Brothers. He asks '"Do you have a ball?" The Lehman Brothers executive met my question with a blank stare... the guy looked at me like I had just made a rude comment about his wife... "A ball?" he asked. "What do you mean?"... "That thing you throw. Tennis ball, soccer ball, any ball. Do you have one?"... The whole exchange had started with him asking me why I believed I was Lehman material... I told him "If you took every college recruit here, put us all in a room, and then shut the doors and turned off the lights, so it was pitch black, and then threw the ball in the room for us to chase around... I can guarantee you.. that I'd be the one coming out of there with the ball."' He was offered the job.
2. Hard work - there are a lot of smart people in funds management, but not all of them work hard. The author recognized this and one of the things he decided to do was to work harder than his competition. Everyday.
3. Independent thought - it is not enough to simply follow the trend, be one of the heard. As the saying goes "the trend is your friend until the bend at the end". Well it's the bend at the end where all the action happens; where fortunes are won and lost. If you're not thinking for yourself, then it is likely that you will get crushed. However, thinking for yourself can result in situations where your view is the minority view. And if it relates to a situation that only resolves itself in the long-term, then you end up holding a minority view for the majority of time. This is a difficult position for many people to put themselves in because they will be constantly derided by the majority of their peers for the majority of the time. Which is why you need...
4. Emotional resilience.
An enjoyable book that is highly recommended.
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Book review from The Aleph Blog
19 Feb 2010
Format:Hardcover
This is a book that gives a feeling for being in hedge fund management, rather than a dry description of what needs to be done if you are in the rare position of being asked to manage a hedge fund.
The author was an ambitious guy. Growing up in Canada, he wanted to play professional hockey. He played ably in youth leagues, the minors, and college. Making the pros was not to be.
So, what does a competitive guy do when he can't pursue his dream? He pursues another dream, managing money. He works hard, and gets one break after another, and eventually manages his own firm, which he sells out to a larger one. He gets a plum job at a firm that proves less than patient with his current performance, and he gets let go. Even that is a triumph for the author. He starts his own firm, which is what he is still doing today.
Think of an analogy to sports -- every player makes mistakes, but the best players recover from mistakes well and learn from them. The author definitely got his share of breaks, both good and bad, but he responded to the bad breaks well, and came out the better for it.
Though this book is about hedge funds and other areas of investing, really, this book is about the author. It tells his story, and as the story gets told, you pick up incidental points along the way:
* What is it like to be an intern at a trading firm?
* How do you learn as you go?
* What was it like inside CSFB during the dot-com bubble?
* How to interview management teams to get an edge.
* How to sense if someone is lying.
* In general, the Fund of hedge funds operators are not desirable clients.
* Get a sense of the strength of consumers
* Get a sense of the three time horizons -- days/weeks, months, and years. (He uses other terms than this, but I appreciated his logic here, because it seemed a lot like what I did as a corporate bond manager. Have a sense of short-term momentum, medium-term trend and long-term mean-reversion.)
* Very good to good means sell
* Very bad to bad means buy
* The value of keeping a trading journal, and reviewing performance.
* Be careful who you do business with, because eventually they may show you the door for less than good reasons.
* Surviving the credit bubble's bust. Buying back in when people are panicking.
The book runs 204 pages, but roughly 30 don't have much on them. The book is breezy, and though I mentioned a lot of things that I got out of the book, readers less familiar with the subject matter might miss some of the points. He does not spend a lot of time on the details. On the other hand, a reader less familiar will get a feel for what it is like to be a part of a fast-paced area in investments.
Who would benefit from the book: Those that would like to read the tale of an interesting guy who had a tiger-by-the-tail initial career in investments.
The author was an ambitious guy. Growing up in Canada, he wanted to play professional hockey. He played ably in youth leagues, the minors, and college. Making the pros was not to be.
So, what does a competitive guy do when he can't pursue his dream? He pursues another dream, managing money. He works hard, and gets one break after another, and eventually manages his own firm, which he sells out to a larger one. He gets a plum job at a firm that proves less than patient with his current performance, and he gets let go. Even that is a triumph for the author. He starts his own firm, which is what he is still doing today.
Think of an analogy to sports -- every player makes mistakes, but the best players recover from mistakes well and learn from them. The author definitely got his share of breaks, both good and bad, but he responded to the bad breaks well, and came out the better for it.
Though this book is about hedge funds and other areas of investing, really, this book is about the author. It tells his story, and as the story gets told, you pick up incidental points along the way:
* What is it like to be an intern at a trading firm?
* How do you learn as you go?
* What was it like inside CSFB during the dot-com bubble?
* How to interview management teams to get an edge.
* How to sense if someone is lying.
* In general, the Fund of hedge funds operators are not desirable clients.
* Get a sense of the strength of consumers
* Get a sense of the three time horizons -- days/weeks, months, and years. (He uses other terms than this, but I appreciated his logic here, because it seemed a lot like what I did as a corporate bond manager. Have a sense of short-term momentum, medium-term trend and long-term mean-reversion.)
* Very good to good means sell
* Very bad to bad means buy
* The value of keeping a trading journal, and reviewing performance.
* Be careful who you do business with, because eventually they may show you the door for less than good reasons.
* Surviving the credit bubble's bust. Buying back in when people are panicking.
The book runs 204 pages, but roughly 30 don't have much on them. The book is breezy, and though I mentioned a lot of things that I got out of the book, readers less familiar with the subject matter might miss some of the points. He does not spend a lot of time on the details. On the other hand, a reader less familiar will get a feel for what it is like to be a part of a fast-paced area in investments.
Who would benefit from the book: Those that would like to read the tale of an interesting guy who had a tiger-by-the-tail initial career in investments.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Review: Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager
13 Dec 2010
Format:Hardcover
My only regret upon completion of Mr McCullough's excellent book "Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager" was that it was not available in early 2008, when reading it would have likely saved my portfolio from near-obliteration. On page 202, the author describes that one of his goals in writing the book was to inspire self-directed investors to have greater involvement in their portfolios: he accomplished this goal and then some!! Given to me by my wife in Dec 2009, I read the book in a few days over the Holidays then re-read it, and on the second pass highlighted passages which were particularly inspirational. The book was my first real exposure to the concept of risk in portfolio management as well as to the broad theme of "Macro" investing, inspiring me to learn more about understanding the inherent risks in every single position a trader or investor takes, and how to proactively protect oneself from loss, and to appreciate fully the global or macro perspective. I also learned how to differentiate recommendations from buy-side as opposed to sell-side analysts and how the two are different. I won't go into further details about specific material I learned but suffice it to say the concepts introduced here led me to further study of a few hundred hours or so!! I also highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a frank and refreshing discussion of what really happened during the crisis of 2008 rather than simply ascribing it to a once-in-a-hundred-years-storm that could not have been anticipated. Mr McCullough anticipated it well, but is humble enough to suggest that his insight came from hard work, paying attention, and thinking for himself rather than being a soothsayer. From the perspective of a trader or investor, the reader will appreciate the humility with which the author approaches his profession, ascribing success to hard work and hard work alone, rather than talent or the ability to be clever. His descriptions of being an early riser, starting his day sometimes 5 hours before the market open, and his habit of taking copious and prolific notes of daily market observations, which he records in journals, was particularly inspirational to me and definitely changed my approach to investing with favorable results. Thanks to the author for his effort.
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