SuperCash: The New Hedge Fund Capitalism (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in February 2004, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan expounded on why he thought hedge funds should stay, for..." (more)
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"James Altucher is scary smart, and also a font of great and original ideas. So it's no surprise that SuperCa$h is so much fun to read and so devilishly informative. It is equally full of 'holy cow!' moments and 'why-didn't-I-think-of-that?' moments. A true keeper."
—Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics

"Altucher describes in easy-to-understand terms the strategies used by the smartest managers in the world—those who are running the hottest hedge funds—to show how they are making money today. SuperCa$h is a great primer for those who are looking to trade like the pros. And it helps that Altucher writes in a clear and fun style!"
—John Mauldin, President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, and author of Bull's Eye Investing

As hedge funds have become more mainstream, some of their strategies are less capable of producing extraordinary returns. In response, hedge fund managers and other sophisticated investors have found new ways to turn cash into supercash. Examine these new ways with hedge fund manager James Altucher and supersize your returns.

From the Inside Flap

Hedge funds, and their strategies, have gained significant recognition for their flexible and aggressive nature towards the markets. But as hedge funds have become more mainstream, the strategies associated with them—such as merger arbitrage, fixed income arbitrage, and convertible arbitrage—have become less capable of generating the returns you'd expect for the risk taken.

To deal with this situation, hedge funds and other savvy investors have found new ways to make it in today's dynamic financial environment. Actively lending money to companies and individuals that banks won't or can't touch; finding arbitrage situations that larger mutual funds are unable to dip into because of size or regulatory constraints; and putting dollars into companies where activism may extract more value from investments are only a few of the ways hedge funds and sophisticated investors are turning cash into supercash in today's tough markets.

Now, in SuperCa$h: The New Hedge Fund Capitalism, hedge fund manager James Altucher examines the many new types of investments that have been developed over the past few years by top hedge funds and investors around the world. Through detailed examples and up-to-the-minute advice, Altucher reveals how you can take advantage of these investments and offers a dozen strategies that can be used to supersize your returns. Some of the topics discussed include:

• How the PIPE (private investments in public equities) mechanism can provide consistent returns in both bull and bear markets
• A new crop of IPOs—SPAC (the specialty acquisitions corporation), Dutch Auctions, and reverse mergers
• Understanding and implementing a closed-end fund arbitrage strategy
• Shortselling methods that have withstood the test of time
• Art as an alternative asset class that is rela tively uncorrelated to the global markets
• And much more

Along the way, Altucher also talks about what to watch out for when investing directly in a hedge fund and offers candid advice for those thinking about starting their own hedge fund.

Turning cash into supercash is not just a style of investing, but a way of life. Striving to maximize the value of your dollars requires nonstop research, patience, courage, and fortitude. Going down the supercash path may be challenging, but the rewards are well worth it.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (March 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471745995
• ISBN-13: 978-0471745990
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #229,646 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book on uncommon investment ideas, not how super hedge funds profit, August 6, 2006

By	ServantofGod - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Instead of discussing how super hedge funds like those operated by Buffet, Soros, Tudor profit big, it is dedicated to uncommon means/stratgies (I cant agree with the author that 1) the ideas were new, 2) his adoption of the term hedge fund to simply all funds covered) including PIPE (private investment in public equities, reverse merger, IPOs - SPAC (the speciality acquisitions corp), Dutch (IPO) Auctions, closed end fund arbritrage, following Billionaires' micro-cap portfolio, activism, stocks just kicked out from indexes for "seasonal" factors, coins, paintings, NY taxi medallions and even delinquent credit card debt etc etc. Okay as a supplementary reading for ideas, but definitely not to be taken as a main course. For those who wanna read to learn more on hedge fund, "Hedgehogging" by Barton Biggs (2006) is a much suitable choice.

For those who have not read the author's first book "Trade like a Hedge Fund: 20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies & Techniques to Winning Profits" yet, I strongly recommend you to read that first. Your liking of that is a strong indicator of your preference to this. In case you dislike that one, please give this a pass.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent information, August 14, 2009

By	Mariusz Skonieczny "Author" (ClassicValueInvestors.blogspot.com) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wow, this is a really good book about learning what other market participants, such as hedge funds, are doing and where they are investing their money. As more hedge funds are created, the opportunities to invest in many areas are shrinking, so they have to find other ways to generate returns. This illustrates some of their new methods. For example, when banks are refusing to lend to some individuals and businesses, some hedge funds are stepping in to fill in the gap. Another example is PIPEs (Private Investments in Public Equities) where public companies, instead going through investment banking firms to raise more capital, simply go straight to hedge funds to negotiate terms, and as a result, close transactions much more quickly.

I absolutely loved this book. Even though I will not be using most of the techniques in the book, I still found it extremely educational. James Altucher is superb. I like most of his books. I would also recommend The Forever Portfolio.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely Info!!, July 28, 2007

By	Kevin Kingston (ny) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It never fails, I go on vacation it hits the fan.( I'm writing this on July 28th 2007 after the DJIA was down 4.2% the previous week and the Russell 2000 dropped 4.9%.) Every single time. Well in chaos there is opportunity. Coincidentally as the markets melting down I'm reading "Super Cash" by James Altucher and I should share his QQQQ Crash Revisited chapter; its revisited from his previous book, "Trade Like a Hedge Fund". In short it states that most of the time, in fact all the time from his sample timeframe of June 2003 - April 15th 2005 when the Q's drop over 1.5 standard deviations below the 10 day moving average (if you don't get that - it happened last week) it bounces - 55 of the last 55 times (at least short term.) This is an over simplification but it basically says to "buy the panic"

If you take the NASDAQ 100 stock from Jan 1 1999 to Dec 31 2004 their were 3715 instances of this occurring (stocks dropping 1.5 standard deviations below their 10 day moving average) and if you bought them on the next morning and held until they were profitable or 20 days - whichever happened first, you would have made money on 3,518 of them or 94.7% turning $1 million into about $9 million if you traded all of them and used 5% of the equity on each trade.
The book is good and I recommend it! It helps you learn to go against the crowd.

By Kevin Kingston, author of: A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate: A True Story About the Ups and Downs From Wall Street to Real Estate Leading to Phenomenal Returns

My Blog: The Real Estate Investors Blog