Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite

There have been many books on bubbles and busts and long market histories, but few have managed to capture the essence and evolution of Wall Street as effectively as "More Money than God." The book's intent is different, but what it chronicles is a vibrant narrative that reveals the evolution of intricate financial market mechanics in their defining decades starting from the mid-1960s.

The central theme of the book is clearly around the emergence of absolute return funds and big personalities that built the most successful of them. One can read the book for these stories of enormous wealth, which are more than interesting, but the book is also about the market practices that underwent seismic shifts to emerge what they are today.

As a result, the book is also about the first movers in various financial strategies, from systematic shorting, as exemplified by A.W. Jones (who started in early 1950s), to the trailblazers in block trading, commodities, and risk management. The detailed examination of these pioneers – the benefactors of early entry into emerging market bonds or those who mastered the art of exploiting market anomalies - is also the examination of the opportunities that were present in markets because of the fast-evolving economic, political, and financial systems as well as technological and procedural/regulatory landscapes. These stories are not just historical accounts; they are a guidebook to understand why we have the practices we have today. The book showcases how these early adopters reaped the rewards of their foresight and audacity and how their activities and aftermaths led to processes and rules that define today's world.

The book is not merely a glorification of success. The other side of the coin is all the risks that nobody thought of and the lessons learned. The author skillfully illustrates the perils of illiquidity, the dangers of leverage, the foolhardiness in assuming certain distribution in risk models, and the often-overlooked cross-correlations in investment strategies - things that pioneers paid dearly for and have become the bread-and-butter of risk management of today's participants.

The book's factual tone is another of its strengths. While it leans positively towards the alpha-generating industry, it never loses its objective stance. The author's ability to distill complex financial concepts and market dynamics into accessible prose is commendable.

The focus on the subtler aspects of market dynamics and interactions, trading cultures, organizational behaviors, etc, make it a timeless read despite the book capturing only a specific era in financial history. This is what makes it a must-read for anyone with a keen interest in financial markets. One hopes the author or somebody else to write books on non-US markets on similar personalities and evolution and on global markets for post-2010.