Hedge

This is an adorable story with precious pictures. It relates the adventures of a young mouse, Wilfred, who is celebrating his birthday. His fellow mice plan a pleasant surprise for him, but he'll have to work to get it. I recieved this book as a two-year old, and I am so glad my mother preserved it for me. This is a great book for bedtime, or any time. Young children and adults alike will enjoy the delicate pictures and accompanying text. You will truly enjoy this book!

A useful study of traditional practices and one of only a handful I would really recommend on voodoo - the others being Voodoo Visions, Divine Horsemen (Maya Deren), Vodou Shaman (Ross Heaven) and Mama Lola (Karen Brown). This book expands on the 'mysteries' of voodoo and is a useful addition to the others.

I was happily surprised by this book. I have only heard of Irving's ghost stories, which are great and why I purchased it. As I was reading the other stories, I was surprised to be reading of distant lands and historical sites as well. Normally, that would not interest me, but Irving's imagination is profound. He can turn a run down liabrary into a living soul who speaks and interacts with us humans. He can turn an ancient palace into a love story. The only thing I had a problem with was the old school language. It did make reading a little more difficult, however I plan on reading this book again, so I'm sure the second time around will be easier and I will be able to come back and turn the 4 stars into 5.

Not to be read quickly and to be savored like fine wine, Washington Irving's "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon" is a matchless classic in American Literature. Written in 1820 and destined to become a true American literary pantheon (along with his preceeding work "Diedrich Knickerboker's History of New York), Irving introduces us to timeless observations and wit that ultimately become enduring discources defining early American Literature.

Irving's mantra with this work is a set of observations, indeed "sketches" of his many travels and musings while roaming through England and his home in upstate New York along the Hudson River. The eternal figures of Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane are evoked in this tome and set a literary standard that others aspire to, but one that Irving effortlessly achieves time and again. Not only does this volume frame these two classics, "The Sketch Book" also contains other literary giants such as "The Angler", "John Bull", "Philip of Pokanoket", "The Specter Bridegroom", "The Mutability of Literature" and "The Art of Bookmaking" wherein the essence of Irving's literary style is neatly conveyed in the following:

"Being now in possesion of the secert, I sat down in a corner and watched the process of this book manufactory. I noticed one lean, bilious-looking wight, who sought none but the worst worm-eaten volumes, printed in black letter. He was evidentley constructing some work of profound erudition that would be purchased by every man who wished to be thought learned, placed upon a conspicuous shelf of his library, or laid upon his table, but never read. I observed him, now and then, draw a large fragment of biscuit out of his his pocket and gnaw; whether it was his dinner, or whether he was endeavoring to keep off that exhaustion of the stomach produced by much pondering over dry works, I leave to harder students than myself to determine."

With a style that has emitted diverse emotions (Lord Byron "unashamedly wept" over the melancholy pieces "The Broken Heart", "The Widow and her Son" and "The Rural Funerals") and having enjoyed over a century and a half of eminent popularity, Washington Irving's "aim in life is to escape 'from the commonplace realities of the present' and to lose himself 'among the shadowy grandeurs of the past' ". Readers tuned in to this philosophy continue to enjoy Irving's literary prose (by buying and re-reading his works), and also, by buying and reading, secure his reputation as a master in American Literature. When one has digested "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon" and "Diedrich Knickerboker's History of New York", one has embraced the essential works of Washington Irving and most would then assuredly join me in saying that he rates eminately in American Literary standing.

There's more to Washington Irving than "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". Irving's life was an enthralling tale of world travel, high society, and other, bookish diversions. He would have been, judging from the biography provided at the front of the edition I read, one of the most fascinating tale tellers of his day. That comes across in the Sketchbook; but we also get an idea of the wicked, roguish sense of humor, that impeccable feeling for satire that Irving could deploy even upon those people he loved most.

The Sketchbook was written largely in England, at first as Irving was inheriting the family law business from his infirm brother. Rankling under the confines of business that can seem insufferable to the creative mind, Irving turned his full energy to writing. These sketches reflect a man passionate about many things, but who is always doctoring his reminiscences with timeless satire: Literature (The Art of Book Making and the Mutability of Literature, with, respectively, the writers of the new school being assaulted by the old favorites of western lit, and the talking book created in illustration of the fact of history's unkindness to many authors and receptivity to a few)is an abiding love to Irving, with every sketch preceded by a poem from antiquity to the works of Irving's coevals, and the stories themselves can make one believe Irving to have been downright pedantic. For what other reason would he break the flow of innumerable stories with lengthy and often only tangentially relevant allusions. Other stories,such as the delightful Christmas cycle and the numerous sketches with Shakespeare addenda, juxtapose Irving's love and ridicule of the English, especially the rural English, with their antediluvian customs (which Irving commends), and their increasing acquiescence to modern fashion (which he abhors). Ironically, the very people whom he often ridiculed as pretentious, bombastic, destructive, prejudiced, and insensitive, loved him, perhaps because, at the same time, he lauded them for their refinement and their characters so analagous to those of the American people, whom he proclaims a young people, while the British should be something like elder statesmen, big brothers if you will.

The Sketchbook is delightful reading, if you can get past the author's bookishness and often archaic language.

Nicholas runs a hedge fund consulting company and a lot of what he writes is not industry standard but rather what he thinks should be industry standard. There's a lot of different definitions in the HF industry on what long/short equity really means. Nicholas won't tell you what other authorities think. So this is a book with a very narrow focus, but even in this area it fails to clearly identify the risks of these equity hedge funds. You have to keep in mind that this guy is a promoter of the HF industry, so he's not an unbiased analyst of what hedge funds can do and cannot do. He's here to "sell" hedge funds... and to sell his company's services. I do not recommend this book because it's not objective at all.

Joseph Nicholas is uniquely positioned to write an intelligent book about market neutral investing. He is the founder of a hedge fund research firm that tracks over 2,500 hedge funds and has developed several hedge fund indexes. The language and mathematics within the book are crystal clear. Overall, this book gives you an excellent technical foundation in market neutral investing.

As Nicholas describes, the market neutral strategy encompasses eight different substrategies that deal with financial instruments ranging from equities, to convertible bonds, and mortgage backed securities. Nicholas dedicates a whole chapter for each substrategy. Within each chapter, he describes how a specific strategy structures its market neutral positions, how it earns its return, and what risks it bears.

Nicholas explains clearly that market neutral investing derives its return not from market movements, but from changes in the relationship or spread between its long positions and its short positions within a certain type of securities.

Market neutral investing consists in observing relationships between similar securities; and taking a long position in the ones that appear underpriced while taking a short position in similar securities that appear overpriced. This strategy is called convergence. The investor bets that the spread between the values of securities he is long and the one he is short will narrow. This entails that in relative term, the long positions are expected to appreciate and the short position are expected to depreciate. Thus, the values of the long undervalued positions and the values of the short overvalued positions should converge over time. That would be ideal. It does not always work out that way. Often, the long and short positions respective values do not converge, but diverge. That is what killed Long Term Capital Management.

The one caveat is that this book comes across as a commercial for market neutral investing. Nicholas convinces you will earn superior risk adjusted returns vs. regular investing strategies. Also, you will benefit from the market neutral strategies being uncorrelated to traditional stocks and bonds markets. Thus, market neutral strategies provide you with diversification benefits.

Regarding diversification benefits, Nicholas is correct. Given that these strategies returns are somewhat independent from market movements in the related securities, it makes sense that they would be uncorrelated to these same markets.

Nicholas assertion that these strategies provide superior risk adjusted return is less convincing. I would not be surprised his data is victim of survivor bias. If you select only the funds that survived during your research period, you ignore all the funds that failed during this same period. As a result, you overstate the performance of this investment style by selecting only the strong survivors. Additionally, his time horizon is too short. On page 7, he graphs the risk vs. returns for different market neutral strategies during the nineties alone. That is not long enough. Granted some of these strategies did not exist for much longer. Thus, we can't tell yet if performance is for real. Also, he states that all these strategies are above the efficient frontier that represents a straight line between the T-Bill risk/return position and the S&P 500 risk/return position. But, the efficient frontier is not on a straight line, but rather on a concave line. If the efficient frontier was graphed correctly, many of the market neutral strategies would be under the efficient frontier.

I am skeptical about the superior risk adjusted return of market neutral strategies because of my own experience. We invested in three such market neutral funds. They had alluring past performance that confirmed everything Nicholas says about such funds. The minute we invested in such funds, their performance mysteriously deteriorated. Somehow, all these funds benefited from convergence before we invested. But, suffered from divergence right after we invested. Within two years, we closed out our investment positions in all three funds, and never regretted it. Thus, I feel that data integrity, and disclosure are real issues in this industry. And, it undermines the credibility of their superior past performance.

My reservation regarding market neutral investing are supported by well publicized failures of some of the biggest funds within this investment style. These include the failure of Long Term Capital Management and the liquidation of the Tiger Funds.

If you want to track how a market neutral fund performs, you can follow one of the oldest AXA Barra market neutral fund (SSMNX). As you will see, the performance is lackluster. And, I believe it is representative of the performance of this sector.

Besides my reservation regarding market neutral investing, this book gives you an excellent foundation on this subject.

Market-Neutral Investing offers insightful strategies to the world of hedge funds. An industry leader, Joseph Nicholas pioneers us through his proven techniques. I highly recommend this book.

This booklet was all fluff and no substance. What are his big "secrets"?
1) put some $ every month in the stock market
2) get paid for referring customers to internet sites.
The problem is, he NEVER explains how to do #2. It is just a vague statement.
The 100+ pages are about 20 pages rehashed over and over.
Very disappointed.

an excellent book as it is easy to read, simple story. It clearly explains the differance in the two classes of people, those who trade their time for Money, and those who invest their time into a system that will generate money. Those who choose the security of a job, will not understand the one who is looking for more, saying they are a dreamer, their heads are in the clouds. Let them say this is all fluff, but to the one who is just starting to look at a differant road, not the 45 year plan, this book will be exciting, and easy to understand. You will begin to see things in a new light, whats happening around you and your world.

It is an excellent book, that tells you how to create your own wealthy into the New Economy. I think Network Marketing is the best way to gain money and follow receiveing it even if you do not work. I see every day a lot of people working in the same job for long years, sad but comfortables in their incomfortability. I recomend this book to all the people who want to be free and have money and time to enjoy it.

This book only gives a brief overview to the actual nuts and bolts of starting a hedge fund. Instead it spends time explaining various hedge fund strategies, risk-management approaches, and basic entity structures (what is a c-corp? what is an s-corp? what is an llc?).

As someone who has started a fund in the past and is looking to start another, this book was a disappointment. If you are learning the info in this book for the first time, you probably shouldn't be starting a fund in the first place.

While admittedly there is a lot of fluff in this book - ie explaining strategy and instruments, there is a lot of valuable advise on creating the structure of the company and constructing a business plan.

If your looking for someone to tell you how to trade in the financial markets you probably shouldn't be starting a fund.

A lot of great commentary about the preparation and hard work to build a business, not just trade/manage money. The other reviews listed here correctly point out that this is not another instructional book with investment techniques. This is the ideal book for someone confident enough with their investing strategy be it equities, bonds, limited partnerships, real estate, futures, commodities etc. to grasp business structures, investor/customer expectation, realistic marketing timelines, accounting, and the business aspect of managing a fund. Expect to seek out additional resources to add on McRary's outstanding work. If you are even toying with the idea of starting a mangement company, fund, fund of funds etc. do not proceed without this book.

The book is a very basic overview of hedge fund industry developments. It is important to note that the history stops at 1999 and that there have been a number of significant industry developments since then. As other reviewers have correctly pointed out, the most interesting aspect of the book is the short articles from fund managers who have started their own funds with as little as $1 million in assets under management.
For those seeking a greater insight into the risk management techniques employed by hedge funds, or the basic "How to's" of starting a fund....this is not the book for you.

I have been looking for a book on hedge funds that is to the point, concise, easy to understand and grasp and I finally found it in Getting Started In Hedge Funds. The book provides a unique look at where hedge funds came from, how the industry evolved and gives insightful information about managers. The profiles are very interesting and provide a unique look at how money is managed. It is easy to read and worthwile for anyone who wants to learn more about these types of investment vehicles.

If you find yourself asking the same question you may just find this book useful. The cover designer realized that most investors did not know the difference between a bush/hedge and a hedge fund and the author, Mr.Strachman definitely obliges the beginner. He writes in a clear tone and use plenty of examples and includes interviews from various hedge fund operators.

You can't go wrong with this kind of solid information. I am an 11 year veteran of the futures markets. I have been a broker and an investor. I am now the author of three books on the subject. I realize that it is important for investors to have non-correlative investments and this is a great introduction to that philosophy.

The book is based on ex post iteration of events and investment strategies, which lacks the necessary foundation of macroeconomic introduction. It requires extensive knowledge of macroeconomics and finance in order to grasp (or digest) what the ideas behind strategies are. Clearly not for a beginner but I would not recommend it for an experienced fund manager at all. I found most of the examples and strategies highly simple.

Feeling brave? If you are, crack Burstein's book and have a look at how some serious big-time money works. Of course, by defintion this is not the majority of market participants so this is not a "popular" read.

But scientific truth, like a successful P&L statement, is not democratic. Either it makes money or it does not. And if does, you can bet that a few will get it right but most won't.

As an arbitrageur, Burstien's book is an excellent unfair advantage to those who are able to heed its message.

Christopher MAY - author Nonlinear Pricing

This is a simple story of a young boy, who with a bit of luck, discovers his natural talent for playing the piano. Through the support of his friends and family and much hard work the boy becomes a world-famous pianist.
It's an enjoyable story that makes you wonder, if you too may have a talent. Maybe you never discovered it, maybe you never had the support to pursue it, maybe you never worked hard enough to become the very best??!!

Tony was a poor boy and not so good at school. He left school when he was fourteen and his mother took hime to a farm. The farm belonged to Mr and Mrs Wood. They had a daughter named Linda but no son so they were very kind to him. Tony worked hard and one day when he was working he found a piano in a building. He played the piano. Linda taught Tony the notes for the piano and then Tony took music lessons from Mr Gordon. Later he went to a college of music where Mr and Mrs Wood paid for him to study. He gave a lot of concerts and became a famous pianist. In the end Tony married Linda and was a happy man.

Could this book possibly get worse? Let's see: Holmes and Moriarty are flip sides of the same man brought out by cocaine addiction used to combat ennui. Interesting, but already covered and much better by Nicholas Myers in The Seven-Percent Solution. Holmes is unable to solve the Jack the Ripper murders because he, or rather his Moriarty personiality is The Ripper. As good a therory as any I've read by so-called "Ripperioligests". And I've devoured every one I can get my hands on. The sad truth is, he got away with it! They didn't catch The Ripper, and it's ridiculious to try to solve murders over 100 years old now. Holmes commits suicide and Watson becomes a cocaine addict. One word: unthinkable. The whole book is a load of highly perfumed bs masquarading as a serious novel. I never read a worse interpertation of the great detective. The Blade says Dibdin should write books on fertilizer since he is imminately conversant with its main ingrediant, certain bovine digestive byproducts. He'd get a zero, but they won't allow it. The Blade is very disgusted.

I've been a lifelong fan of Holmes and Watson, and you'd have to have been living under a rock not to have heard tall tales about "the horrid, ghastly, nightmare of a story that would make Sir Conan Doyle spin in his grave". Naturally, I became intrigued to find it.

Let me warn you right off, Dibdin pulls ZERO punches. In his descriptions of setting, and in his portrayals of the characters. Holmes, at least in the beginning, is completely priceless. His reactions to ACD's mangling of "A Study In Scarlet", are worth stomaching the rest of the more gruesome aspects of this story if you bookmark that page and then go back to it when you need to laugh your head off in agreement. That drivel ACD put in the middle was so damn boring, I akways skipped over it when re-reading Study. But anyway. Back to this Dibdin account.

Either you will love this book, or you shall hate it worse than Holmes hated A Study in Scarlet. There is really no middle ground, to reading this book. I digested it in two days. It left me with mixed feelings, to be honest. On the one hand, there were a couple plot twists that were left hanging... ....

The ending was however, in a word, intolerable. .... Dibdin's use of Mycroft Holmes is if anything, tacit at best. One mention, from Holmes himself stating that the two brothers had been working on the case together. In the end, the book leaves me with one fact and one fact alone: on the issue of drugs, JUST SAY NO. Though there are some more vehement critics, who might well say the same for reading this book.

All I can tell you is, come at it with your own perceptions, not other people's. And perhaps, Mr. Dibdin may have improved his writing skills since that... curious attempt at a Holmes fiction, in the late 70's. To those who think the story good... glad you liked it. To those who think it's horrid and ghastly.... blame the 70's, ........

The most controversial Holmes story is more like it. There have been a few original novels involving Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel killings, i.e. the Jack the Ripper murders. However, none of them are as controversial as Michael Didbin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story.

What differentiates this story is that this is a case in which some of Holmes' later classic cases take place inbetween murders, such as The Red-Headed League and Silver Blaze, and those are merely referred to as taking place.

There are references to previous cases, such as "The Cardboard Box" and "The Speckled Band." And there is a proposed theory that maybe another Andaman Islander (like The Sign Of Four's Tonga) is on the loose. However, the chief suspect becomes Moriarty, usually the mastermind, but given the way Holmes has put a stop to many a criminal scheme, the actual killer. One clue is to the location of the killings and what letter they make.

Lestrade is portrayed as a pompous idiot and someone who is more antagonistic of Holmes rather than deferential in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories.

One interesting aspect is that ACD is a character hired to publish some of Holmes' cases, and is given A Study In Scarlet and The Sign Of Four--"Mr. Thaddeus and Brother Bartholomew. Jonathan Small and Tonga!" Holmes is contemptuous of Doyle's glamorizing and bits of artistic license, whereas Watson doesn't seem to mind so much.

The Holmes and Watson team dynamic is maintained here in exactly the way ACD portrayed it. Holmes' methods of detection and his classic arrogance is done to a tee here. The suspense and description of the defiled bodies are pretty graphic, so strong stomachs, please.

Hardline acolytes will probably be in an uproar regarding the book's resolution. Others, such as myself, will be interested at this interpretation of the Whitechapel murders. Compare this to the graphic novel and movie From Hell, also about Jolly Jack--a far different point of view.