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  • The Quants

  • How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It
  • Written by: Scott Patterson
  • Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
  • Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (34 ratings)

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The Quants

Written by: Scott Patterson
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
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Publisher's Summary

In March 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with ­million-dollar stakes. At the card table that night was Peter Muller, who managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT. With him was Ken Griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group. There, too, were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, and Boaz Weinstein, chess “life master” and king of the credit-default swap.

Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. Over the past 20 years, this species of math whiz had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk takers who’d long been the alpha males of the world’s largest casino. The quants believed that a cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift ­billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. Few realized that night, though, that in creating this extraordinary system, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein had sown the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.

©2010 Scott Patterson (P)2010 Random House

What the critics say

"Scott Patterson has the ability to see things you and I don't notice. He does an admirable job of debunking the myths of black box traders and provides a very entertaining narrative in the process." (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times bestselling author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan)

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What listeners say about The Quants

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wonderful.

Still listening and have numerous hours remaining, but i just wanted to share my opinion. I enjoyed this book immensely and can summarize it in one word ... diversification. It is truly remarkable how arrogance and greed can cloud the innate discerning nature of even the most experienced and wisest investors. Even though the book is about a handful of young inexperienced bookworms but what i find fascinating is that these guys were actually instrumental in crippling the global financial pendulum.... not sure why not enough experienced investors did not see that the trading in credit swaps used to support subprime mortgage assets were in fact a ticking time bomb .... over a decade later i'm sure that there is very little appetite for 20ish year old chicks selling their innovative and non conventional quant based speculations .... Thank the lord for BH.

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Maybe my favorite finance book ever

Correction, favorite book ever. The story, players, facts and narration are amazing it’s even better the second time though.

Second correction - I have to renege on above, Robert A. Caro's "The Power Broker" is now my favorite book of all time.

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