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On September 23, 1998, the boardroom of the New York Fed was a tense place. Around the table sat the heads of every major Wall Street bank, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and representatives from numerous European banks, each of whom had been summoned to discuss a highly unusual prospect: rescuing what had, until then, been the envy of them all, the extraordinarily successful bond-trading firm of Long-Term Capital Management. Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is the gripping story of the Fed's unprecedented move, the incredible heights reached by LTCM, and the firm's eventual dramatic demise.

Lowenstein, a financial journalist and author of Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, examines the personalities, academic experts, and professional relationships at LTCM and uncovers the layers of numbers behind its roller-coaster ride with the precision of a skilled surgeon. The fund's enigmatic founder, John Meriwether, spent almost 20 years at Salomon Brothers, where he formed its renowned Arbitrage Group by hiring academia's top financial economists. Though Meriwether left Salomon under a cloud of the SEC's wrath, he leapt into his next venture with ease and enticed most of his former Salomon hires--and eventually even David Mullins, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve--to join him in starting a hedge fund that would beat all hedge funds.

LTCM began trading in 1994, after completing a road show that, despite the Ph.D.-touting partners' lack of social skills and their disdainful condescension of potential investors who couldn't rise to their intellectual level, netted a whopping $1.25 billion. The fund would seek to earn a tiny spread on thousands of trades, "as if it were vacuuming nickels that others couldn't see," in the words of one of its Nobel laureate partners, Myron Scholes. And nickels it found. In its first two years, LTCM earned $1.6 billion, profits that exceeded 40 percent even after the partners' hefty cuts. By the spring of 1996, it was holding $140 billion in assets. But the end was soon in sight, and Lowenstein's detailed account of each successively worse month of 1998, culminating in a disastrous August and the partners' subsequent panicked moves, is riveting.

The arbitrageur's world is a complicated one, and it might have served Lowenstein well to slow down and explain in greater detail the complex terms of the more exotic species of investment flora that cram the book's pages. However, much of the intrigue of the Long-Term story lies in its dizzying pace (not to mention the dizzying amounts of money won and lost in the fund's short lifespan). Lowenstein's smooth, conversational but equally urgent tone carries it along well. The book is a compelling read for those who've always wondered what lay behind the Fed's controversial involvement with the LTCM hedge-fund debacle. --S. Ketchum

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Roger Lowenstein (born in 1954) is an American financial journalist and writer. He graduated from Cornell University and reported for the Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, including two years writing its Heard on the Street column, 1989 to 1991. Born in 1954, he is the son of Helen and Louis Lowenstein of Larchmont, N.Y. Lowenstein is married to Judith Slovin.

He is also a director of Sequoia Fund. His father, the late Louis Lowenstein, was an attorney and Columbia University law professor who wrote books and articles critical of the American financial industry.

Roger Lowenstein's latest book, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve (The Penguin Press) was released on October 20, 2015.

He has three children and lives in Westfield, New Jersey.

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书籍介绍

On September 23, 1998, the boardroom of the New York Fed was a tense place. Around the table sat the heads of every major Wall Street bank, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and representatives from numerous European banks, each of whom had been summoned to discuss a highly unusual prospect: rescuing what had, until then, been the envy of them all, the extraordinarily successful bond-trading firm of Long-Term Capital Management. Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is the gripping story of the Fed's unprecedented move, the incredible heights reached by LTCM, and the firm's eventual dramatic demise.

Lowenstein, a financial journalist and author of Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, examines the personalities, academic experts, and professional relationships at LTCM and uncovers the layers of numbers behind its roller-coaster ride with the precision of a skilled surgeon. The fund's enigmatic founder, John Meriwether, spent almost 20 years at Salomon Brothers, where he formed its renowned Arbitrage Group by hiring academia's top financial economists. Though Meriwether left Salomon under a cloud of the SEC's wrath, he leapt into his next venture with ease and enticed most of his former Salomon hires--and eventually even David Mullins, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve--to join him in starting a hedge fund that would beat all hedge funds.

LTCM began trading in 1994, after completing a road show that, despite the Ph.D.-touting partners' lack of social skills and their disdainful condescension of potential investors who couldn't rise to their intellectual level, netted a whopping $1.25 billion. The fund would seek to earn a tiny spread on thousands of trades, "as if it were vacuuming nickels that others couldn't see," in the words of one of its Nobel laureate partners, Myron Scholes. And nickels it found. In its first two years, LTCM earned $1.6 billion, profits that exceeded 40 percent even after the partners' hefty cuts. By the spring of 1996, it was holding $140 billion in assets. But the end was soon in sight, and Lowenstein's detailed account of each successively worse month of 1998, culminating in a disastrous August and the partners' subsequent panicked moves, is riveting.

The arbitrageur's world is a complicated one, and it might have served Lowenstein well to slow down and explain in greater detail the complex terms of the more exotic species of investment flora that cram the book's pages. However, much of the intrigue of the Long-Term story lies in its dizzying pace (not to mention the dizzying amounts of money won and lost in the fund's short lifespan). Lowenstein's smooth, conversational but equally urgent tone carries it along well. The book is a compelling read for those who've always wondered what lay behind the Fed's controversial involvement with the LTCM hedge-fund debacle. --S. Ketchum

• 作者：Auguste 发布时间：2011-11-29 21:45:06

  后人哀之而不鉴之，亦使后人而复哀后人也

• 作者：局外人 发布时间：2015-07-03 14:03:38

  今年读过的最好的商业书籍，对LTCM的兴起与衰落进行了完整复盘。虽然作者很cynical，但既未为LTCM文过饰非，也没有落井下石地对他们进行不公正的道德指责，忠实记录了LTCM如何在成功投资后过于迷信自己的model而丢掉了谨慎，在贪婪和业绩压力下步入自己不熟悉的risk arbitrage领域投下重注，genius们的分歧、冲突，overuse the leverage on interest swaps，直到黑天鹅的出现导致credit spread飙升，市场走势和模型预测完全相反，满盘皆输，最终被高盛敲下了棺材上的最后一根钉子。

• 作者：c h l 发布时间：2013-04-11 22:13:48

  我觉得还蛮好看的欧！描写银行们的那一part堪称搅屎棍比武大会！

• 作者：琳琳琳小姐 发布时间：2021-12-07 18:44:52

  排版有些乱

• 作者：北海盗 发布时间：2019-04-27 10:40:44

  这本书简直就是在啪啪打金融工程的脸（但人家依旧是最好找工作的专业……）

• 作者：小刺客 发布时间：2009-12-02 14:30:52

  波澜壮阔

• 理性之崇拜

  作者：秋个庐主人 发布时间：2006-10-22 12:04:09

  这本书英文原版2000年就有了，中文版06年又重版了。但不知为什么这本书在豆瓣上没有，于是我就加上了，顺便再写点推荐的文字。

  推荐这本书基于两种推荐：其一，这本书作为书写一段历史——一个公司和一群人的历史是成功的，非常好读，还把事情描述得很清楚，把枯燥的事件变成了一个有趣的故事但还包括客观叙述和不多的评论；其二，这本书是关于一个炫目的公司——长期资本管理公司，这个公司本身就代表了金融界一个时代和一种精神。

  LTMC——长期资本管理公司的光环是两位诺贝尔经济学奖获得者，其实是Meriwether作为leader开创了数量经济研究进入了实战应用阶段，他们开创了证券交易的可计算，因为可计算于是也有了可计算的风险——数量化的风险控制。

  现代经济学一直以来就是以数学为基础的，其中不断有人用心理学、行为学等加以调和但始终还是万变不离其中，尤其是现代金融学。当然这种演变已经渐渐改变了调和的范围，变成向新领域的探索。但是作为探索的方法，依然是西方化的逻辑基础。伟大的古希腊传统以降，逻辑系统是整个科学学的依据，也是人类理性的内涵。

  大家都知道经济学上关于经济人的假设，也就是理性假设。人的经济活动是理性的，所谓理性就是通过比较选择有利于自己的方式行事。而这种比较最迫切的需要就是可计算的，这种方式是可以简单复制和推广的，这符合人脑的适应机制——通过简化变量和选用已有模式思考降低思维复杂程度、减少消耗和成本，尽快得出结论；另一种比较方式是可感觉的，感觉那种方式对“我”更舒服，舒服的模式化就是一种美感，这自然就是艺术化选择，但我们没有把这种选择方式放入理性选择（说开去，皇帝的最大利益是什么？皇帝的选择可以是勤奋工作以保江山万代，也可以吃喝玩乐寻求个人最愉悦的生活，宋徽宗就是典型，哪个更理性呢？）。心理学、行为学乃至脑科学研究渗透到经济学就是从新考量这种理性。

  但是所谓研究就是要获得机理，获得可知晓乃至可控制的过程和结果。那么对感觉的研究也是同样的目的。这就必然把不可知晓机理的审视过程划分为审美，把可计算的作为理性。

  而更有甚者，把理性选择过程当作一种审美过程，享受其中至善至美的完美感受，终于把理性推向了崇拜的极致，造就了非理性的理性。

  LTMC的人群几乎都是数学出身，在理性主义的文化背景和潜意识下，理性崇拜的必要条件，当他们在所罗门公司离群索居获得骄人业绩给他们充分条件实现这样的自我。而他们的失败原因可以归结为多种多样，很多人认为他们过于贪婪，而我的感觉是他们过于相信他们的计算，相信他们的模式。他们也许认为理性是不会被击败的。而事实他们预测的套利结果最终都实现了，只是他们不能抗住了，失败直接原因主要是这些不能抗住的原因，我想这是非理性的理性的结果。LTMC垮台后不久这群人又建立了LWM parteners，同样延续着超过市场很多的收益率。我相信这是理性的胜利。

  但是非理性的理性有一个必然崩溃的结果，原因就是哈耶克所说的“致命的自负”。人总是过高估计自己，这句话是没错的。人也总是过高估计自己的理性。而非理性的理性危害比非理性有过之而无不及，因为非理性的理性一旦闯祸都是大祸。“学好数理化，走遍天下都不怕”之类的极端科学主义就是一例。只有理性的对待自己理性的能力才会善始善终，说到底理性是件很难的事。

  LTMC的出现无论如何是件好事，宏观上标志着人类理性之崇拜走到了新的境界，人类使用数字理性对待世界进入了新的时代，此后将更快的步入虚拟世界；微观上风险控制模型在有一次灾难下又升级了一代。

  而对我们国家的人来说，需要更多对理性的敬畏。

• 百闻不如一读

  作者：李宏伟 发布时间：2009-03-17 21:02:19

  Lowenstein是典型的journalist的写作风格，讲一个故事，每逢一个人物出现就絮絮叨叨的要把这个人物的小学经历开始说一遍。看你喜不喜欢这个风格了，不大的一件事情，可以被他写的很长，而且都是成熟性质的话。我是无爱的。LTCM这个故事其实一篇长文就可以解决的，被他搞得非常复杂。