Barton Biggs' "Hedge Hogging"

In light of the fact that I am not surprised he named dropped did he mention that I was sort of a neighbor growing up on Riversville road and his daughter played tennis with me.

 

I tried to delete the above post. It was stupid ( but true) if a mod reads this please remove it. thanks.

 

how good of a tennis player are you jem?, whats your ntrp rating?

 

in the early eighties I had a scholarship in college to non tennis powerhouse. I made money in local tournaments, had my head handed to me in a few satellites.

I pretty much did not play for 20 years.

When I got to florida I was 240 pounds. (in college I was 160)

I am playing alot and am down to about 215.


I am currently playing in a 4.5 league but there was a complaint that I am really a 5.0.

I have a 5.5 strokes but I am still 30 pounds overweight and I am not really a good doubles player because my volleys have not come back yet. I can hit with anybody who is not on the tour. But only for about 20 minutes.

 

by the way if the previous post was deleted I was responding to a question. This new 10 minute timer is tough.

 

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Could be, DR. Z;
or could be at 70 year old, he actually believes his chapter 10 hedgehog title''Only egotists or fools try to call market tops or bottoms''

Not calling aybody a fool /egotist, just presenting a written view .

 

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Matt Stichnoth
bankstocks.com
mstichnoth@bankstocks.com More by This Author...

Barton Biggs’s new Wall Street memoir, Hedgehogging, is so bad, in so many ways, and on so many levels, that I doubt I have the literary gifts to do justice to its awfulness in under 800 words. But I'll try!

Let me start, if I must, with Biggs’s discussion of his “investment philosophy.” Here’s a man, remember, who for years was the chief strategist at Morgan Stanley, arguably the most prominent investment bank on Wall Street. He’s dealt with a lot of smart people for a long time. You’d think he’d have picked up some interesting insights to share.

But based on what his book has to say, you’d be wrong! On the available evidence, Barton Biggs doesn’t have a coherent investment philosophy, in my view. At one point, for instance, Biggs makes himself sound like a value-oriented, bottom-up type. Fine. But elsewhere, he’s strictly macro, as with his famous, bearish bet on oil in 2004. For awhile, he talks up momentum investing. Then there’s the chapter on Fibonacci numbers. (Don’t ask.) “The money game is played in the third and fourth dimensions,” he writes. That happens to be literally true, of course, but I don’t think that’s what Biggs means. I think he means the game is played in the fifth and sixth dimensions--in which case, I haven’t a clue as to what he’s talking about. By page 111, even Biggs himself seems confused. “My real theory is that the investment superstars have some special magic with markets that enables them to do the right things most of the time.”

Oh-kay. Thus we receive the accumulated wisdom of forty years on Wall Street: “special magic.” In Biggs’s mode of analysis, managers have “hot streaks” and then “go cold as ice.” Performance is all that matters, he writes. Well, yes. As to a discussion of what process he believes will most reliably generate superior performance, you’ll be in the dark. The investment philosophy he describes will work just as well selecting lottery numbers as it will for picking stocks.

If Biggs the strategist is confused, meanwhile, Biggs the man is . . . well, let’s just say he’s not a lot of laughs at parties. Biggs seems intent to make the point early on that he is the opposite of what Sue Anne Nivens used to call, on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, a “people person.” Here he is describing the attendees at Morgan Stanley’s hedge fund conference at The Breakers in Palm Beach, the year that he pitched his hedge fund there:

There are many tribes at the conference. First, there are the professionals, who come from the big funds of funds, foundations, endowments, and pension funds. They have bored, cynical stares and limp handshakes. . . . The American men wear suits and have sweaty armpits. The women are tall and plain. By contrast, some of the Royal and Ancients from the big London FOFs have striped blue shirts with white collars and double-barrelled named and chins. . .

Then there is the rest of the crowd, the amateurs, mostly individuals and small, wannabe funds of funds. Germans with bulging eurobellies from family offices mingle with bloated Arabs in pale suits and white shirts, their handshakes as cool and clammy as snakeskin. Former investment bankers exchange distinguished lies with portly ex-diplomats, permanently deformed by self-importance. Wrecked old Texans with faces like road maps sour breath, and fitted Hawaiian shirts . . .

“Bored, cynical stares and limp handshakes.”? Ex-bankers “deformed by self-importance.”? These are the people, don’t forget, that Biggs hopes to sign up as customers. The other fund managers at the conference aren’t up to the Biggsian standard, either, by the way. They are “twerps.”

But for all Hedgehogging’s snootiness and investment vacuity, the worst thing about the book is its incoherence. In particular, Hedgehogging consists of a) a long complaint about what a pain in the neck it is to raise money in the hedge-fund business (you don’t say!), b) a series of descriptions of money managers, identified by first names only (why, I don’t know), who Biggs says he admires, apparently because their recent numbers have been strong, and c) a bunch of filler, including, among other things, discussions of the fine-art market, the Kondratieff wave, John Maynard Keynes’s sex life, and a description of a dinner with Margaret Thatcher. All of this, I scarcely need to add, is 100% insight-free.

As I say, Hedgehogging is dreadful. If I have prevented you from buying it, I believe I have done you a personal favor. You are very, very welcome.

 

Biggs is the best example now of analysts who shouldn't have trading authority. One could add Garzarelli, Cramer, Gabelli, among others.

 

I have read this book and I completely disagree with this review. I wonder whether this guy actually read the book properly.
It is not an investment book , it is more a behind the scene look at hedge funds and their managers.

 

"Barton Biggs doesn’t have a coherent investment philosophy, in my view" But he raised 2bb. Did an alarm go off here? Is the field a little over financed, over populated, undertalented? It's a warning. Too many chasing an edge that doesn't exist.

He talks about guys that stretch it and spend the money and then try to perform. That is the modis operendi of a compulsive gambler. Action baby. Living on the edge. I spent a lot of time in Casinos counting cards, and some of these guys sound like guys I saw playing basic Blackjack thinking they were smarter than the cards.

How many out of ten are worth their salt? Are the rest risking the entire market structure?

Anybody here remember Long Term Capital? Gee it worked on paper. Livermore made a lot of money in Bucket Shops too, but when he had to actually trade, he ran into a problem.

Two in Palm Beach folded last year because they weren't even investing the money. One left for Korea on the Redeye. The other left his cranium on the ceiling.

That should be the penalty for underperformance. It'd be like the Bourne Supremecy. Jason slides a 9mm with one bullet across the table.

The book is a, a, what's a good word for indictator? I guess it's indicator.. the 1979 "Equities are Dead " BW cover, Cramer 's game show, and this book. What are they saying? Don't hold overnight? Who knows? Let's just say, it's not good.