Joseph G. Nicholas
1 Only for the most basic hdege fund newbie
This book had a lot of promising reviews, but what a deception! The typography is very bad, some pages are writen so big that 2 pages could be condensed into 1. The overall layout looks like it was taken from a glorified powerpoint presentation...
The book reviews different strategies hedge funds can employ in one chapter. Thereafter one complete chapter is devoted to each strategy. However, you don't learn much more by reading the detailed chapter. If you have even a basic understanding of different hedge fund techniques such as market-neutral, merger arbitrage or global macro, then you will probably not learn anything new from this book.
The more interesting part of the book is the last part where the author tries to forecast where the industry is going. However, this is full of known truths such as "hedge funds will continue to exist and take on more importance"... duh! Maybe the book is simply too old and should be revised?
Don't waste your time and money on this one.
2 A Good Read!
While this book is meant to serve as an introduction to the complex world of hedge funds, hedge fund managers and hedge fund investors (in short, the hedge fund dynamic), it is decidedly not of the For Dummies family that currently dominates the do-it-yourself investment section of the book store. This is a highly sophisticated look at what has become one of the most exciting sectors of the investment world. If you have some knowledge of finance and its terminology, and you want to know what a hedge fund is, what kinds of strategies most hedge fund managers use and whether or not you'd want to or be able to invest in hedge funds, we ... recommend this highly specific book to you. On the other hand, if you just want to gain some insights into the investment world, you'd be better off picking up the financial section of the newspaper. Hedge funds are serious and so is Joseph G. Nicholas' book. (... note: Despite the 1999 copyright date, the book makes no reference to Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, nearly bringing about a global financial crisis.)
3 UNDERSTAND THE HEDGE FUND STRATEGIES MANAGERS USE
Nicholas examines all the hedge fund strategies in detail and provides the investor with examples of all the strategies used by managers. Excellent for understanding the mechanics of each strategy. As a doctoral student in business administration doing a thesis on hedge funds, I highly recommend this book for all investors
4 A good book overall
In the recent flood of often useless books aimed at investors this book stands out as a little gift. It provides a clear and detailed introduction to hedge funds useful to investors and to anybody with an interest in understanding how hedge funds work. The book is math-free, but thinking is not optional. I like the summary of hedge fund strategies and the description of their returns and weights in the universe of hedge funds. Unfortunately, one has to hope that the chapter and the charts will be updated frequently for they will be soon obsolete. As this book definitely deserves to see more editions, I hope that the author will go through the trouble to include both more examples and more details for each of the eleven strategies. That would definitely make the book more appealing to those readers with sophisticated backgrounds and useful to be used in classrooms as well.
5 Any personal library is lacking without this book.
Hedge Funds by Joe Nicholas offers a clear view of the complex world of hedge funds. He explains the individual strategies of fund managers and illustrates each on with an intelligible example. Nicholas then takes you through the steps necessary to incorporate this infromation into your personal investment strategies. This book has the clarity and educational value of a good textbook with all the readibility of a novel. No personal finance library is complete without Hedge Funds by Joe Nicholas.
A reader from the University of Chicago
6 Straightforward overview with useful statistics
Easy to read overview of hedge fund industry. I especially appreciated the strategy-specific description and industry growth and performance statistics. Also noticed that appendix statistics are updated on their internet site.
7 Not worth the time
This is one of the drier books on hedge funds (granted, the whole topic is dry, but this particular book is drier than most).
8 The first thorough treatment of the hedge fund industry.
Joe Nicholas' book, "Investing in Hedge Funds", fills an important void in the world of financial literature. Since the bailout of Long Term Capital Management in September, hedge funds have held a prominent place in the minds of the financial media. This attention has raised questions about what hedge funds are and what hedge fund managers do. The tendency has been to characterize all hedge funds as alike.
Joe Nicholas' book directs readers away from this way of thinking about hedge funds, and towards thinking about how to differentiate them by their underlying investment approach. The bulk of the book is dedicated to 11 hedge fund strategies employed by hedge fund managers. Each of the strategy chapters provide examples of real trades made by hedge fund managers.
Mr. Nicholas provides a vision of what has accounted for the rapid growth of the hedge fund industry, and an outlook for the future of that industry. He argues that the growth of the industry is being driven by the creation of, and access to, reliable information about what hedge fund managers do. This book seems to be an outgrowth of that vision.
