Weekend Reading
Writing worth reading - 12th/13th October 2024
Renaissance’s shrinking hedge funds by Robin Wigglesworth
“Although recent performance has been terrible and worse than prior performance would have suggested was likely for 2020, in track records as long as ours, some risk-return ratios every bit as bad as the ones we are now seeing are not shocking Obviously, large positive or negative returns are more likely when volatility is high, as that is basically the definition of volatility…”
The mystery of Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s great disrupter by Lionel Barber
“After four sit-downs with Son, as well as interviewing more than 150 people who know or have worked with him, I have concluded there’s a lot more to this restless character than meets the eye. While Son did not invent, control or own a breakthrough technology, he is the archetypal middleman. He has ridden the technological wave which has created untold wealth and penetrated every corner of our society. …”
Gary Stevenson claims to have been the best trader in the world. His old colleagues disagree by Robert Smith
“We wondered if the statement would be a little more qualified in The Trading Game, which chronicles both Stevenson’s heady rise on Citi’s trading floor and his eventual acrimonious exit from the US banking giant. Maybe Stevenson meant he was the best trader in Citi’s foreign exchange division, or perhaps just on the STIRT desk that’s “short-term interest rate trading where he worked? It would still be no mean feat for such a youngster…”