''More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite'' (2010) is a financial book by

Sebastian Mallaby Sebastian Christopher Peter Mallaby (born May 1964) is an English journalist and author, Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and contributing columnist at ''The Washington Post''. ...

published by Penguin Press. Mallaby's work has been published in the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', and the '' Atlantic Monthly'' as columnist, editor and editorial board member. He is a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The book is a history of the

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 s ...

industry in the United States looking at the people, institutions, investment tools and concepts of hedge funds. It claims to be the "first authoritative history of the hedge fund industry."Includes additional links to video interviews with Mallaby It is written for a general audience and originally published by Penguin Press. It was nominated for the 2010

Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award ''Financial Times'' Business Book of the Year Award is an annual award given to the best business book of the year as determined by the ''Financial Times''. It aims to find the book that has 'the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern ...

and was one of ''The Wall Street Journal''s 10-Best Books of 2010. The ''Journal'' said it was "The fullest account we have so far of a too-little-understood business that changed the shape of finance and no doubt will continue to do so." In a review in ''

'', the book was called a "smart history of the hedge fund business" that explains "how finance’s richest moguls made their loot," and "argues that the obsessive, charismatic oddballs of the hedge fund world are Wall Street’s future — and possibly its salvation."

Summary

In each chapter, Mallaby takes a narrative focus on one individual or company that played an important role in the history of hedge funds. Mallaby then weaves in other people, ideas or companies related to the star of the chapter. The following are some of the major people, institutions and concepts on a per chapter basis. The first in each list is the central character of that chapter. *Ch 1 Big Daddy: A. W. Jones,

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 s ...

*Ch 2 The Block Trader:

Michael Steinhardt Michael H. Steinhardt (born December 7, 1940) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and former antiquities collector. In 1967, he founded a hedge fund, Steinhardt Partners which he ran until he closed it in 1995. After a ...

, Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co.,

Block trade A block trade is a high-volume transaction in a security that is privately negotiated and executed outside of the open market for that security. Major broker-dealers often provide "block trading" services—sometimes known as "upstairs trading de ...

Monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...

*Ch 3 Paul Samuelson's Secret:

Commodities Corporation Commodities Corporation (frequently referred to as "CC") was a financial services company, based in Princeton, New Jersey that traded actively across various commodities. The firm was noted as one of the leading commodity and futures trading fir ...

Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he " ...

Bruce Kovner Bruce Stanley Kovner (born 1945) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is chairman of CAM Capital, which he established in January 2012 to manage his investment, trading and business activities. From 1983 through 2 ...

( Caxton Corporation), Trend trading,

Automated trading system An automated trading system (ATS), a subset of algorithmic trading, uses a computer program to create buy and sell orders and automatically submits the orders to a market center or exchange. The computer program will automatically generate orders ba ...

*Ch 4 The Alchemist:

George Soros George Soros ( name written in eastern order), (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated mo ...

Quantum Fund The Quantum Group of Funds are privately owned hedge funds based in London, New York, Curaçao (Kingdom of the Netherlands) and Cayman Islands. They are advised by George Soros through his company Soros Fund Management. Soros started the fund i ...

, Reflexivity,

Jim Rogers James Beeland Rogers Jr. (born October 19, 1942) is an American investor and financial commentator based in Singapore. Rogers is the chairman of Beeland Interests, Inc. He was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management. He wa ...

*Ch 5 Top Cat:

Julian Robertson Julian Hart Robertson Jr. (June 25, 1932 – August 23, 2022) was an American billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. Robertson founded Tiger Management, one of the first hedge funds, in 1980. From its inception in 1980 to its 1 ...

Tiger Management Tiger Management Corp., also known as "The Tiger Fund", is an American hedge fund and family office founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and closed in March 2000/01. It continues to operate today in direct public equit ...

*Ch 6 Rock-and-Roll Cowboy: Paul Tudor Jones II *Ch 7 White Wednesday:

Black Wednesday Black Wednesday (or the 1992 Sterling crisis) occurred on 16 September 1992 when the UK Government was forced to withdraw sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), after a failed attempt to keep its exchange rate above the ...

, Stanley Druckenmiller and

*Ch 8 Hurricane Greenspan:

Shadow banking system The shadow banking system is a term for the collection of non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) that provide services similar to traditional commercial banks but outside normal banking regulations. Examples of NBFIs include hedge funds, ins ...

1994 bond market crisis The 1994 bond market crisis, or Great Bond Massacre, was a sudden drop in bond market prices across the developed world. It began in Japan and the United States (US), and spread through the rest of the world. After the recession of the early 1990s, ...

, Stanley Druckenmiller and

*Ch 9 Soros vs Soros: 1997 Asian financial crisis, 1998 Russian financial crisis, Stanley Druckenmiller and

*Ch 10 The Enemy Is Us: Long-Term Capital Management, John Meriwether *Ch 11 The Dot-Com Double:

Dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

and

*Ch 12 The Yale Men: David Swensen,

Tom Steyer Thomas Fahr Steyer (born June 27, 1957) is an American climate investor, businessman, hedge fund manager, philanthropist, environmentalist, and liberal activist. Steyer is the co-founder and co-chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, founder and ...

Event-driven investing Event-driven investing or Event-driven trading is a hedge fund investment strategy that seeks to exploit pricing inefficiencies that may occur before or after a corporate event, such as an earnings call, bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, or spin ...

*Ch 13 The Code Breakers:

Renaissance Technologies Renaissance Technologies LLC, also known as RenTech or RenTec, is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, which specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statisti ...

James Simons James Harris Simons (; born 25 April 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his ...

, David E. Shaw *Ch 14 Premonitions of a Crisis:

Amaranth Advisors Amaranth Advisors LLC was an American multi-strategy hedge fund founded by Nicholas M. Maounis and headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. At its peak, the firm had up to $9.2 billion in assets under management before collapsing in September 20 ...

, Brian Hunter *Ch 15 Riding the Storm:

John Paulson John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He leads Paulson & Co., a New York-based investment management firm he founded in 1994. He has been called "one of the most prominent names in high fina ...

, Subprime mortgage crisis *Ch 16 "How Could They Do This":

Financial crisis of 2007–08 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of f ...

Editions

*''More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite''. Penguin Press, 2010. Hardcover USA. *''More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite''. Penguin Paperbacks, 2011. Paperback USA. *''More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite''. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011. Paperback UK. * Kindle other

electronic book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alth ...

editions. *

Audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...

edition by Audible Audio, narrated by Alan Nebelthau.

References

{{Reflist

External links

''After Words'' interview with Mallaby on ''More Money Than God'', August 28, 2010
2010 non-fiction books Finance books Business books Penguin Press books

Summary

Editions

See also

References

External links