My older brother went to one of those magnet high schools in Korea that sent half the class to Ivy leagues. His high school had a NYT article written about having one of the highest average SAT scores in the world (2200+ something?). I remember one of his best friends went to a US college and worked at SAC capital before the collapse. Towards the end of my high school, my brother gave me a copy of this book and told me this lore.

Took me a couple years to get to it, but the tale is really fascinating. The writer is clearly a journalist, and it does in a way feel like you're reading one long WSJ article. But it still injects enough realism and atmospheric elements that treat the story like a "story". It's an unbelievable tale overall.

Steve Cohen arguably has one of the most fascinating origin stories in high finance. He's not a math savant like Jim Simons, he's not a statistics and computer genius like Ken Griffin or David Shaw, he's not a macro guy with well rounded sharp intellect like Bill Ackman, Chase Coleman, Carl Icahn, or others. He's incredibly smart sure, but no one really understands how he's so good at trading. The author attributes this as his "sixth sense".

Sure, you can argue that he's good because he clearly leveraged insider information. But if you really look, it's clear that he was always ahead of the curve even before he leverage insider information. I think his unexplainable and intuitive understanding of equity trading is almost mythical. How could this be? How can a guy, who is competing in the most competitive market in the history of human civilization, keep winning again and again without using sophisticated models or a savant-tier brain? It's baffling, truly.

Once the story really gets rolling, it becomes even more interesting. The "expert networks", the corruption, the super-lawyers, the goons who had to fall on his sword, the FDA trials, the manipulation, it all coalesces into this insanely rich story of the fall of SAC capital. Steve Cohen one hundred percent knew about insider trading, by the way. It's unbelievable how he got out of this unscathed.

I highly suggest this book to someone who wants to learn about arguably the most infamous SEC hunt in modern history. The entire US government pinned this man against the wall, then he slipped away like water between the cracks.

Black Edge

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Black edge (2017)

Black edge (2017)

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