Book Review An American Hedge Fund by Timothy Sykes, BullShip Press, Hamden, Conn., forthcoming Oct. 1, 2007, 267 pp., $19.95 (paper). It happens often enough. A smart kid discovers stock trading after getting his hands on some moneyâfrom his bar mitzvah and the family jewelry business, in Timothy Sykes' case. He makes money trading; he's hooked. He trades day and night and makes more money. Attending school is deadly dull by comparison. The obvious next step is to start a hedge fund. Mr. Sykes, something of an expert on micro-cap stocks and a millionaire before his 22nd birthday, started Cilantro Fund Partners LP in 2003 during his senior year at college. This occasionally entertaining but badly flawed book is the story of his rise and fall as money manager. Highlights include his appearances on CNBC and other media, his being named a top trader by a magazine and his adventures as a connoisseur of food and modelsâthe lissome kind. Now he's also become a publisher by setting up BullShip Press to publish his own book. The name of the press evidently reflects what he thinks of most titles in the hedge fund genre. He's a very enterprising 20-something, but clearly a young 20-something in the way he sees things. He hated Tufts University from the start, he explains, because it was cold, "[t]he girls were overwhelmingly unattractive" and he had to work hard to get good grades. So he transferred elsewhere and eventually received his degree. But the bulk of the book is about his trades, successful and otherwise. This litany of ticker symbols quickly gets wearisome for a reader who is not a day trader in micro-cap stocks. The personal insights Mr. Sykes offers, like "My ego drove me, but I also shared my thoughts because I was pleased that everyone made money right alongside me," don't help much. Around 1,000 hedge funds are launched each year and nearly the same number of funds fail every year. It is easy to start one but extremely difficult for a fund to survive over the long haul. The saving grace of this book is that it gives a sense of a young person trying to get into the business, but it is riddled with clichés and undeveloped notions picked up from others. Unfortunately Mr. Sykes attempts to bolster his tale with a rant about a well-known policy issue. He blames the failure of his fund on the U.S. regulatory regimen that forbids hedge funds to solicit investments. Even the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has acknowledged that the gag rule is not useful. But regulatory barriers are not Mr. Sykes' real problem. He suggests the publicity he generated, for instance by starring in a reality show, would have helped him raise capital if he had been free to tell people about his fund. But the effect of any SEC restriction is beside the point because he lost big time in 2006, and his clients left because of the steep loss. It is just as well that Cilantro Fund remained tiny. Mr. Sykes' one notable big trade was a disaster that proved he lacked a viable investment strategy. He bought illiquid shares in a software startup, became enamored of the company and invested more in it. The future looked great. "I truly believed this one investment would propel me to the next level in 2006," he wrote. "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House, April 2007), an entirely different sort of book from a very different sort of trader, helps one understand such common mistakes. "The Black Swan" has rapidly become required reading in the financial industry, just in time for the mortgage shock Previous HedgeWorld Story. Mr. Sykes lost about 26% on assets of $1.2 million and is still holding a good chunk of the software startup that brought him down, the stock being too illiquid to unload. He had in effect transformed himself from a day trader into a venture capitalist, recognizing only after the event that his experience is in trading, not venture capital. Can you say style drift? The book comes with a table of the fund's audited returns and is described as "a novel" in the publicity material, presumably to get around the solicitation ban. The raucous media hype around Mr. Sykes shows how very desperate the media are to trot out anyone who can be called a hedge fund manager. No established money manager has put on a flamboyant TV show the way Mr. Sykes has. His real skill might be celebrity showmanship rather than money management. Now some kids want his help to start their own hedge funds, probably attracted by visions of dating models. Investors should really make sure to give money only to fund managers who are adults in the full sense of the word. CKurdas@HedgeWorld.com
Can't please 'em all! Although in my defense, he was sent a version that has been changed dramatically and the stuff he quoted me on isn't even in there anymore! Not to mention he totally misjudged the point I was trying to make at the end....Chidem and I have been emailing back and forth and he's agreed to see what the new version looks like. With that said, negative reviews, especially with Eprado's help, spread my exposure even more. One bad review, 50 good ones, still like my odds. Speaking of which, here's another good one I just found: http://reviewarchives.tripod.com/id30.html
Close, but it can't compete with the real thing: http://www.thestreet.com/s/a-little...er-armour/video/strategysession/10373402.html
Oh wise one, please tell me how many book customers will be alienated by a review like this from Amazon.com's #7 Reviewer: AN AMERICAN HEDGE FUND Timothy Sykes 5 stars Understanding Success: A Primer for Understanding the Stock Market Timothy Sykes steps into the forum of books on Hedge Funds with one terrific advantage: Sykes shares his initial interest, his development, his experience, and his successful creation of a Hedge Fund that made him a millionaire and an acknowledged expert in the field of Finance by age 26! In his book, AN AMERICAN HEDGE FUND, Sykes proves that in addition to his extraordinary gift as an entrepreneur he is also a very fine writer, able to communicate his dream and his reality with a forceful, compelling style that will find an audience among those who wish to understand the seeming conundrum of the Stock Market. Sykes relates this resource book on understanding finance in a personal, autobiographical manner. His tone, while always serious, manages to be light and wholly understandable, no small feat for a subject as daunting as Hedge Funds. For example, the lead-in page of this book offers no fewer than five definitions of the term Hedge Fund (and for those of us for whom the language of high finance is most foreign, this is a kind introduction!) and then proceeds to âteach usâ about the Stock Market by relating his own fascination and initial experiences all the way through his success as being a manager of his own Hedge Fund. It is intriguing material, eloquently written, and so user friendly that it would be nearly impossible to complete this book without a substantial grounding in a subject once alien to the masses. Some authors, when writing about their own success stories in a field many find strange, tend to toot their own horn to the extent that ultimately dismissing the book as yet another âbrag book of the American Dreamâ results in shelving an unfinished bit of boredom. This is most assuredly not the case with Timothy Sykes: it is the humanity with which he shares his experiences, good and bad, that keeps our attention and gradually encourages emulation. This is a fine little book, overflowing with information, and delivered like a gift to the reader. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, Amazon Top 7 Reviewer
Timmay, before you take comfort in a positive review of your book by 'Grady Harp', you should consider the source. Some observations on Amazon and Grady Harp: Not odd at all. The system is rigged... Google Grady Harp for more of the same.
I dunno man, I haven't put in the research you have--all I know is that he's a respected critic, he gives plenty of negative reviews and yet he gave me my best review yet. I've also updated my website with the 150+ glowing blurbs from people I'd never talked to before I sent them my book
What does one have to do to become an amazon top 10 reviewer? Is that something special...I am being serious. In reality I would guess most amazon reviewers could be anyone and post under aliases. Good or bad review by an amazon person really doesnt hold any weight. When are The NY times or The Wall Street Journal gonna review your book....I think they will hold more weight than some Grady Harp character.
Not to rain on your parade Tim...but I dont think Grady Harp actually read your book.....not that you lied...but I think Grady can't read...because he is blind....that has to explain the way the guy dresses.... http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A328S9RN3U5M68
The Top Amazon Reviewers are widely respected, as they have all reviewed thousands of books, DVDs, etc and they use their real name. Each one has thousands of followers. TheNYTimes and WSJ will review my book in time, but you forget that we're still 2 months away from publication! I only sent out prepublication review copies just to get blurbs to print in the final copy; I didn't expect that nearly everybody would like it so much.