When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein

MAY 20, 2008

6/10. Interesting though, as usual with these things, the book is long on personality, anecdote and rumour, and a bit too short on factual details of what exactly happened (roughly LTCM made ever more leveraged bets on ever less liquid and well understood products and got mashed up when a crisis came along and everyone ran for the door).

Interesting side points that are alleged (but not confirmed) include Goldman Sachs using their position as potential buyer/rescuer to gain privileged access to LTCM’s position and then front-running them (i.e. selling those positions out from under LTCM thereby helping Goldman and harming LTCM).