Sheelah Kolhatkar's engrossing account of the pursuit of cheating stock traders fed into my growing skepticism of the fair operation of public markets. I stopped investing in the stock markets shortly after the 2000 tech bubble burst and have no interest in returning. So-called "investment management" today signifies no more and certainly no less than gambling. Take away the suits. Take away the glitzy advertizing. Take away the government programs for "investing in your future," and what you're left with is a system that rewards greed and high stakes gambling. Part of Kolhatkar's thesis is that you often have to cheat to win big, although not all of the big winners are cheaters. There is certainly a prima facia case to be made that Steve Cohen expected his traders to cheat to help him win big. Why am I not surprised? Flip over to other accounts of how computer trading helps a few traders make millions of transactions and beat others to the trading floor in micro-seconds. More cheating. Less transparency in the markets. What continues to sadden me are the scores of graduates of elite universities taking their potential to Wall Street and, in Canada, to Bay Street to work out the fantasies of greed and leave more serious problems to the second tier of risk takers. ( )

great journalism ( )

Excellent reporting. The next time someone asks me why I believe that our financial system is yet again on the brink of collapse and why 401(k)s are dangerous rackets that benefit the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the average citizen, I’m going to tell them to read this book. ( )

A story about SAC Capital, solid read, nothing special. Not one of Lewis' better books. ( )

On insider trading by hedge funds. Surprisingly good and interesting, especially towards the end. Biggest surprises for me: that they could (mostly) get away with what looks like blatant insider trading. That it is even legal to have "information networks" where experts at companies are paid lots of money for talking to analysts (even though they are not supposed to reveal insider information). And finally, the number of "good guys" (FBI agents, prosecutors etc) that eventually switched sides and started working for hedge funds instead. ( )