Hedge Funds: Courtesans of Capitalism

by Peter Temple

Like the courtesans of a bygone age, hedge funds cater to the wealthy and project an aura of mystery and excitement. But as the Long Term Capital Management debacle showed, their activities affect us all.
Far from neutralising risk, as their name might suggest, some are simply vehicles for large-scale speculation - raiding currencies, disrupting bond markets, and embarrassing governments.
This book looks in detail at the secret world of hedge funds, how they work, the larger than life characters who run them, their private passions and the risks they run.

Genres: Finance, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Peter Temple has been involved in the City and its Financial Markets for nearly thirty-five years as a Fund Manager, an Investment Analyst and, for the last 17 years, as a Freelance Financial Journalist. He is a regular contributor to a number of publications including the Financial Times, Investors Chronicle, and Interactive Investor, and has written more than a dozen investment books. He is a Fellow of the Securities Institute. He and his wife, who works as his researcher, live and work in a converted water mill in the English Lake District.

Reviews

[hamad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writer has an overly evident bias against hedge funds. That said he does manage to sprinkle around some nuggets of useful information but not worth the trouble for most readers outside those very interested in the space.

I also thought the title of the book was stupid.