I managed to finish reading the book Hedge Hogging last week during my 7 days in hospital. Here is a longer review.
The author Barton Biggs spent 30 years at Morgan Stanley building up their investment management business. In 2003 he formed his own hedge fund named Traxis Partners which was wound up after his death in 2012. But this is no out of date history of past financial events as much of what it covers is topical and relevant to today’s stock markets.
It’s partly a journal of events in his life but with extensive diversions into the big issues most investors face particularly the psychological difficulties that you can face. Topics such as short-selling, private equity, emerging markets, market bubbles and investment cycles are covered – we certainly seem to be in a down cycle at present rather than a temporary correction. As an investment strategist over 30 years he obviously experienced a variety of market conditions. He covers the two main investment approaches – based on growth and value but in essence was agnostic.
He has some interesting comments on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – the latter he met more than once. He explains the success of the Yale Endowment Fund under David Swensen and explains to an audience of tech stock fanatics that “the human emotions of fear and greed that drive the stock market to excess have not changed over the course of human history and remain as valid today as in the past. Busts are busts, booms are still booms, and bubbles always burst, but this was boring stuff, and the crowd stirred restlessly. The glitterati understandably had no interest in hearing about busts or bursting bubbles. On to the next IPO and salacious stock idea”.
A good paragraph that gives you an impression of his writing style is the following: “If you hang around the investment business long enough eventually you experience some mysterious, almost supernatural events because the stock market is a capricious beast, almost a force of nature like the sea or the arctic. It can be bountiful and loving in its embrace but also hard and cruel and sadistic. Making your living from the stock market is a strange, hazardous, yet beguiling occupation. It’s a little like being a ship’s captain back in the time of wind and sail. As the master of a whaler out of Nantucket in those days of yore, in good fair, you blissfully rode the ocean’s friendly currents. Then suddenly without warning, the sea would turn and you would find yourself driven helplessly toward some distant rocky shore by one of its fierce, irrational storms. Men and women who live at the mercy of the whims of the sea and weather are a superstitious lot”.
He ends with a review of the biography of John Maynard Keynes by Robert Skidelsky which I have lined up as my next book to read. In all Hedge Hogging is a fascinating look at the world of hedge funds but there are many lessons to be learned from it for ordinary investors.
Lastly let me say about a few words about my stay in an NHS hospital, which was not for the first time. The popularity of the NHS is falling and quite rightly. It is a dysfunctional organisation that does not compare well with the systems in other countries (bar the USA).
I cannot complain about the treatment I had but the big problem is the culture. Treating patients as children to be organised and disciplined, not as people. It was also very wasteful, keeping me in bed when I was only “walking wounded” as the army might say when I could have been treated at home for most of the time at less cost. How do you reform the culture of an organisation? With great difficulty is the answer. Easier to start from scratch.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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