"A risk-management maven who's been on Wall Street for decades…Bookstaber's book shows us some complex strategies that very smart people followed to seemingly reduce risk—but that led to huge losses." (
Newsweek)
"Mr. Bookstaber is one of Wall Street's 'rocket scientists'--mathematicians lured from academia to help create both complex financial instruments and new computer models for making investing decisions. In the book, he makes a simple point: The turmoil in the financial markets today comes less from changes in the economy--economic growth, for example, is half as volatile as it was 50 years ago--and more from some of the financial instruments (derivatives) that were designed to control risk." (The New York Times)
"Bright sparks like Mr Bookstaber ushered in a revolution that fuelled the boom in financial derivatives and Byzantine 'structured products.' The problem, he argues, is that this wizardry has made markets more crisis-prone, not less so. It has done this in two ways: by increasing complexity, and by forging tighter links between various markets and securities, making them dangerously interdependent." (The Economist)
"He understands the inner workings of financial markets...A liberal sparkling of juicy stories from the trading floor..." (The Economist)
"…smart book…Part memoir, part market forensics, the book gives an insider's view…" (Bloomberg News)
"Like many pessimistic observers, Richard Bookstaber thinks financial derivatives, Wall Street innovation and hedge funds will lead to a financial meltdown. What sets Mr. Bookstaber apart is that he has spent his career designing derivatives, working on Wall Street and running a hedge fund." (The Wall Street Journal)
"Every so often [a book] pops out of the pile with something original to say, or an original way of saying it. Richard Bookstaber, in A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation, accomplishes both of these rare feats." (Fortune)
"a must-read amidst the current market chaos" (BusinessWeek.com)
"Bookstaber is a former academic who went on to head risk management for Morgan Stanley and now runs a large hedge fund. He knows the subject and has written a lucid and readable book. To his aid he calls mathematics (from Bertrand Russell to Godel's theorem); physics (particularly Heisenberg's uncertainty principle); and even -- meteorology." (Financial Times)
"The book covers a lot about risk management that is relevant to capital markets conditions today and the liquidity crisis." (Financial Times, Saturday 25th August)
"...an insider's guide to markets, hedge funds and the perils of financial innovation. We saw plenty of those in 2007." (The Sunday Telegraph, Sunday 25th November 2007)
"I cannot recommend this book too highly. It is a clear exposition of what the combination of derivatives, leverage and hedge funds can do to the markets.
In short, A Demon of our Own Design is a guide to the dangerous financial markets we have created for ourselves by the clever innovations of structured finance, derivatives, credit default swaps and other newfangled products that are a mystery to the ordinary investor and even plenty of the sophisticates in the investment business. To understand the demonic risks we're taking, read this book."--Forbes.com
It's Wall Street's most painful paradox. Investors are more sophisticated than ever, are enabled by unprecedented technology, and protected by more government oversight and regulation than at any other time in history. Yet Wall Street is becoming a riskier and riskier place. Crashes and catastrophic losses seem commonplace. Hedge funds wreck on the financial shoals with a disturbingly familiar pattern. Worse, today's financial crises do not arise from economic instability or acts of nature, but from the very design of the financial markets themselves.
In A Demon of Our Own Design, Richard Bookstaber paints a vivid picture of a financial world that is ever edging toward disaster. As a hedge fund 'rocket scientist,' Bookstaber provides an insider's perspective to the tumultuous management decisions made by some of the world's most powerful financial figures from Warren Buffett to Sandy Weill to John Meriwether,as well as recounting his own contribution to market calamities. He designed some of the complex options and derivatives that, combined with the globalization of the world's markets and the ever-increasing speed of transactions, allow markets to slide out of control. And he explains why the best efforts of institutions on the front lines to create safeguards, manage risk, and regulate the markets may end up contributing to instability. Bookstaber argues that many of the financial innovations and regulations that are supposed to level the playing field instead make the markets more dangerous for all the players, big and small.
Drawing on his intimate knowledge of such infamous disasters as the 1987 Crash and the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber identifies the key areas that make markets vulnerable: liquidity that begets greater leverage; innovation that creates greater complexity; and a structure that demands a nonhuman level of rationality. The twofold solution he suggests—reducing complexity and breaking the tight coupling of transactions—goes against the prevailing winds of Wall Street, but will lead to a more robust and survivable market.
From the Back Cover
Praise for A Demon of Our Own Design "This book is powerful stuff. When the hero of the story is a cockroach, you are assured of a controversial, illuminating, and fascinating discovery of where the financial risks really lurk and how to avoid them. Bookstaber knows whereof he speaks: I have read every word of his sophisticated essays on why market crises are inevitable, why investors are their own worst enemies, and how regulators should keep out of their way."
—Peter L. Bernstein, author of Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
"Are you ready for the real deal? An insider, everysider view of the Wall Street calamities that have kept investing tantalizingly hot and frighteningly volatile since the crash of '87. For an in-depth, curtains-open, and coolly written exposition of Wall Street, Bookstaber is my man."
—Mark Rubinstein, Professor of Finance, UC Berkeley
"Exactly WHY do markets misbehave? Rick Bookstaber draws on his extensive knowledge of today's complex financial markets to set forth many of the reasons endogenous risk is so large AND so ominous. He understands one of the most sobering aspects of this risk: its sources are far too complex to be meaningfully assessed. This gives lie to current regulatory bromides that 'everything will be OK provided that we better assess and manage risk,' for the risks that matter most are non-assessable!"
—H. "Woody" Brock, President, Strategic Economic Decisions, Inc.
"Rick Bookstaber was at the nexus of many of the financial crises of the past twenty-five years. His recollections and smart analyses of markets, meltdowns, and the people who caused them make for a genuine thriller."
—Emanuel Derman, author of My Life as a Quant
About the Author
Richard Bookstaber runs an equity hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was the director of risk management at Ziff Brothers Investments and at Moore Capital Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. He served as the managing director in charge of firm-wide risk management at Salomon Brothers and was a member of Salomon's powerful Risk Management Committee. Mr. Bookstaber also spent ten years at Morgan Stanley in quantitative research and as a proprietary trader, concluding his tenure there as Morgan Stanley's first market risk manager. He is the author of three books and scores of articles on finance topics ranging from options theory to risk management. Bookstaber received a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.
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