Ugly Americans (book)
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Ugly Americans (book)
''Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions'' is a book by Ben Mezrich that recounts the exploits of an American called John Malcolm (a pseudonym) arbitraging index futures in Japan in the 1990s. The book was released on May 4, 2004 by William Morrow and Company. By 2008 Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Productions has the film rights to the book. Plot summary In 1992, twenty Ivy League football players visit Japan, to play an exhibition match against Japanese college kids. On this trip, Princeton University's contribution to that all-star-Ivy team, John Malcolm, encountered a Princeton alum, Dean Carney (also a pseudonym). Carney was an executive in Kidder Peabody's Tokyo office, and he suggested Malcolm contact him about a job if his pro football career did not pan out. When it did not, and following a job search on Wall Street, Malcolm contacted Carney in 1993. Malcolm then became one of KP's two Osaka-based traders. ...
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Ben Mezrich
Ben Mezrich ( ; born February 7, 1969) is an American author. Early life and education Mezrich was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Molli Newman, a lawyer, and Reuben Mezrich, a chairman of radiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He has two brothers, including Josh Mezrich. He was raised in a Conservative Jewish household, and attended Princeton Day School, in Princeton, New Jersey. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Social Studies from Harvard University in 1991. Personal life Mezrich has been married to Tonya M. Chen since 2006. Some of his books have been written under the pen-name Holden Scott. Mezrich is known for his non-fiction books. He lives in Boston. Written work Mezrich is best known for his first non-fiction work, '' Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions''. This book tells the story of a group of students from MIT who bet on blackjack games using a sophisticated card cou ...
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Professional Football (gridiron)
In the United States and Canada, the term professional football includes the professional forms of American and Canadian gridiron football. In common usage, it refers to former and existing major football leagues in either country. Currently, there are multiple professional football leagues in North America: the two best known are the National Football League (NFL) in the U.S. and the Canadian Football League (CFL) in Canada. American football leagues have existed in Europe since the late 1970s, with competitive leagues all over Europe hiring American Imports to strengthen rosters. The Austrian Football League and German Football League top division are known as the best leagues in Europe. The Japan X-League is also a strong league that has a long history since 1971. The NFL has existed continuously since being so named in 1922. The best American football players are among the highest paid athletes in the world. Organization Compared to the other major professional sports leag ...
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Index Arbitrage
Index arbitrage is a subset of statistical arbitrage focusing on index components. An index (such as S&P 500) is made up of several components (in the case of the S&P 500, 500 large US stocks picked by S&P to represent the US market), and the value of the index is typically computed as a linear function of the component prices, where the details of the computation (such as the weights of the linear function) are determined in accordance with the index methodology. The idea of index arbitrage is to exploit discrepancies between the market price of a product that tracks the index (such as a Stock market index future or Exchange-traded fund) and the market prices of the underlying index components, which are typically stocks. For example, an arbitrageur could take the current prices of traded stocks, calculate a synthetic index value using the relevant index methodology, and then apply an interest rate and dividend adjustment to calculate the "fair value" of the stock market index f ...
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Hedge Fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives. Financial regulators generally restrict hedge fund marketing to institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and accredited investors. Hedge funds are considered alternative investments. Their ability to use leverage and more complex investment techniques distinguishes them from regulated investment funds available to the retail market, commonly known as mutual funds and ETFs. They are also considered distinct from private equity funds and other similar closed-end funds as hedge funds generally invest in relatively liquid assets and are usually open-ended. This means they typically allow investors to invest and withdraw capital periodically based on the fund's net asset value, whereas pr ...
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Great Hanshin Earthquake
The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum intensity of 7 on the JMA Seismic Intensity Scale (XI on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale). The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was located 17 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the center of the city of Kobe. Approximately 6,434 people died as a result of this earthquake; about 4,600 of them were from Kobe. Among major cities, Kobe, with its population of 1.5 million, was the closest to the epicenter and hit by the strongest tremors. This was Japan's deadliest earthquake in the 20th century after the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which claimed more than 105,000 lives. Earthquake Most of the largest earthquakes in Japa ...
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Kobe Earthquake
The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum intensity of 7 on the JMA Seismic Intensity Scale (XI on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale). The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was located 17 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the center of the city of Kobe. Approximately 6,434 people died as a result of this earthquake; about 4,600 of them were from Kobe. Among major cities, Kobe, with its population of 1.5 million, was the closest to the epicenter and hit by the strongest tremors. This was Japan's deadliest earthquake in the 20th century after the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which claimed more than 105,000 lives. Earthquake Most of the largest earthquakes in Japa ...
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Nikkei 225
The Nikkei 225, or , more commonly called the ''Nikkei'' or the ''Nikkei index'' (), is a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It has been calculated daily by the '' Nihon Keizai Shimbun'' (''The Nikkei'') newspaper since 1950. It is a price-weighted index, operating in the Japanese Yen (JP¥), and its components are reviewed once a year. The Nikkei measures the performance of 225 large, publicly owned companies in Japan from a wide array of industry sectors. Another major index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX). History The Nikkei 225 began to be calculated on , retroactively calculated back to May 16th 1949, when the average price of its component stocks was 176.21 yen. Since January 2010, the index is updated every 15 seconds during trading sessions. The Nikkei 225 Futures, introduced at Singapore Exchange (SGX) in 1986, the Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE) in 1988, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in 1990, i ...
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Nick Leeson
Nicholas William Leeson (born 25 February 1967) is an English former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorized and speculative trades resulted in the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest merchant bank. Leeson was convicted of financial crime in Singapore court and served over four years in Changi Prison. Between 2005 and 2011, Leeson had senior management roles at League of Ireland club Galway United. After it suffered financial difficulties, he resigned from his position as chief executive officer. He is also active on the keynote and after-dinner speaking circuit, where he advises companies about risk and corporate responsibility. Early life Nick Leeson was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, and attended Parmiter's School in nearby Garston. Born to working-class parents on a council estate, his father was a self-employed plasterer, his mother a nurse. After finishing sixth form in 1985 with six O Levels and two A level passes in English Literatur ...
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Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Strait of Malacca to the west, the Singapore Strait to the south, the South China Sea to the east, and the Straits of Johor to the north. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet; the combined area of these has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. It has the third highest population density in the world. With a multicultural population and recognising the need to respect cultural identities of the major ethnic groups within the nation, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. English is the lingua franca and numerous public services are available only in Eng ...
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Barings Bank
Barings Bank was a British merchant bank based in London, and one of England's List of oldest banks in continuous operation, oldest merchant banks after Berenberg Bank, Barings' close collaborator and German representative. It was founded in 1762 by Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, Francis Baring, a British-born member of the German-British Baring family of merchants and bankers. The bank collapsed in 1995 after suffering losses of £827 million (£ billion in ) resulting from fraudulent investments, primarily in futures contracts, conducted by its employee Nick Leeson, working at its office in Singapore. History 1762–1889 Barings Bank was founded in 1762 as the John and Francis Baring Company by Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, with his older brother John Baring (1730–1816), John Baring as a mostly silent partner. They were sons of Johann Baring, John (né Johann) Baring, wool trader of Exeter, born in Bremen, Germany. The company started business in offices off Cheapsid ...
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Bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords. Banking in its modern sense evolved in the fourteenth century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but in many ways functioned as a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in the a ...
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General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energy, digital industry, additive manufacturing and venture capital and finance, but has since divested from several areas, now primarily consisting of the first four segments. In 2020, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 33rd largest firm in the United States by gross revenue. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th most profitable company, but later very severely underperformed the market (by about 75%) as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE – Irving Langmuir (1932) and Ivar Giaever (1973) – have been awarded the Nobel Prize. On November 9, 2021, the company announced it would divide itself into three investment-grade public companies. On July 18, 2022, GE unveiled the brand names of the companies it will ...
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