Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story

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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 332.620973 EAN: 9780470073940 ISBN: 0470073942 Label: Wiley Manufacturer: Wiley Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 380 Publication Date: 2008-05-02 Publisher: Wiley Studio: Wiley
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Interesting but depressing Comment: This is an interesting story of a hedge fund manager who becomes obsessed with a short position in a company that seems, at a minimum, a little shady. None of the characters in the book are likeable and at the end of the book it's not clear if Einhorn is making a mountain out of a molehill or not. But it is a fascinating detailed look at an ugly mix of management greed, an investor's ego and government waste and intimidation. Customer Rating: Summary: Instructive and Informative, but Overdone and a tad Ironic Comment: David Einhorn's book is about how deceptive and deceiving accounting can be, and how the government can foster corrupt enterprises. He does a particularly good job of showing how his firm (and others) discovers accounting discrepencies, and an important lesson is that one cannot take for granted financial statement numbers "blessed" by accounting firms. Unfortunately, the book becomes incredibly tedious to read. He actually reviews too much data--reveals too much information here--more than this typically voracious and curious reader could even tolerate. The tedium may represent how incredibly thorough (OCD) Mr. Einhorn is about his work--or it may reveal how much the underlying story has actually consumed him/gotten under his skin. Regardless, it is ironic that his own hedge fund is very secretive and unrevealing about its own performance. For example, go to his web site and try and find performance information about his funds--not possible! It is interesting that he periodically comments about the top notch performance of his funds in the book--but no summary of audited performance data are provided to evaluate his true performance--interesting given his pleas for more transparant data published by publicly traded companies. Oh well, can't have it all! Customer Rating: Summary: Boring ... unless ... you seek in-depth knowledge of short-selling Comment: Very boring to read. Explains at length reasoning that leads to short sales. Unless short-selling is of particular interest to you or, if you face an imminent encounter with SEC, this book is unlikely to be of any value to you. Customer Rating: Summary: A closer look at modern wall st. and hedge funds Comment: Fooling Some of the People All of the Time catalogs the incredible events that followed the author's fast rising hedge fund and the investment community that attacked him after sticking his neck out in a speech. The investment community attached to protect its interests, which provides a good lesson in today's financial crisis. The book gives an informative look at the ins and outs of wall street, and the lengths people there will go to attack companies and individuals who attempt to uncover untoward behavior. It's a very interesting, if detailed, read and necessarily so. As an investor and fan of the financial markets, I don't typically read psychology books, but a colleague passed along The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book to me this week when we were discussing the chaos that has befallen the financial markets of late. I devoured that book! It's really great at revealing the role emotions play in ANY decision you make, and I'm a smarter investor for having read it. Customer Rating: Summary: A Great Detective Story Comment: I like reading books about corporate collapses (eg about Enron and Worldcom), and this book, whilst not about a corporate collapse, details the author's extensive investigation into the accounting and other practices of Allied Capital. Both as a story and technically, this is an exciting book. More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is the gripping chronicle of the ongoing saga between author David Einhorn’s hedg fund, Greenlight Capital, and Allied Capital, a leader in the private finance industry. Page by page, it delves deep inside Wall Street, showing why the $6 billion hedge fund decided to short shares of Allied Capital and how Allied responded with a Washington, D.C.-style spin-job—attacking Einhorn and disseminating half-truths and outright lies.