A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp

What's a Heaven For

By: Barton Biggs

Narrated by: Don Hagen

Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp recounts the ecstasy and the agony of investors in the hubris-filled years of the great secular bull market and the terrors of the financial collapse. It is a story of personal and investment triumph and tragedy in the tradition of An American Tragedy and Bonfire of the Vanities. Though the tale is fiction, it is faithful to the actual market events of the decade of hedge fund madness and the ensuing destruction in the great bear market of 2007–2009 and its aftermath.

In A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp, the former top-ranked global strategist for Morgan Stanley, and now a hedge fund manager, expertly weaves fact and fiction to describe how the mysterious world of hedge funds and the people who run them really works. It is the story of how the brilliant but toxic interaction of brains, intensity, raw ambition, hubris, and greed combined with the “perform or perish” creed to fuel the egregious excesses and, eventually, contribute to the bursting of the stock market and financial bubbles. Lifestyles, portfolios, and loves were recklessly leveraged creating stunning excesses, but when the world turned, it wasn’t just proud fortunes that were lost; relationships and souls were ravaged as well. There is a compelling, but tragic, love story here about two people who celebrated love as a solution to spiritual isolation. The novel is also an investment chronicle, a tragic saga of how all brilliant performance is transitory and how, unfortunately, there is no stock market strategy that works forever and that too much money can’t spoil. The protagonist is Joe Hill, an authentic American hedge fund success story if there ever was one, who came from nowhere, reached for heaven, and momentarily grasped it. Joe Hill isn’t the typical Wall Street whiz kid sporting an Ivy League education. Born on the wrong side of the tracks in rural Virginia, Joe had to work for everything he wanted. And he wanted it all. A masterful mix of fact and fiction, A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp is the inside, rags-to- riches story of one man’s American dream that became the world’s financial nightmare.

©2010 Barton Biggs (P)2011 Gildan Media Corp

Superb...very entertaining as well

interesting storyline, a good financial literature, very enlightening, and entertaining.

Also offers a good perspective on human factors as it applies to speculation

Fascinating Listen

Weaving fact and fiction, this fascinating audio book tells the tale of a hedge fund manager's rise and fall.Using actual events in the history of the stock market, the author shows the greed, the excesses, and the bursting of the bubble. The interesting personalities in this tragic saga make it a great "rags to riches" story that ends in a financial nightmare.

Wasted Credit

First the author explains why he wrote the book, what he was thinking when he wrote the book and in what chapter these ideas come to fruition in the prologue. I found this insulting. Second the narrator made the book sound like a boring PBS special. I listened to the preview online it didn't sound as bad as it is. I abandoned the listen after the 15 minutes.

Belongs in Fiction Not Investing

Not much specific help to an investor. Its just a fictional tale of the life of a hedge fund guy and his associates tragic rise and fall and what didn't work for them and others. Yes I know not to give my money to a hedge fund guy to manage it. Next......