The Quants

How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It

By: Scott Patterson

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

In March 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with ­million-dollar stakes. At the card table that night was Peter Muller, who managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT. With him was Ken Griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group. There, too, were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, and Boaz Weinstein, chess “life master” and king of the credit-default swap.

Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. Over the past 20 years, this species of math whiz had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk takers who’d long been the alpha males of the world’s largest casino. The quants believed that a cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift ­billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. Few realized that night, though, that in creating this extraordinary system, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein had sown the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.

©2010 Scott Patterson (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"Scott Patterson has the ability to see things you and I don't notice. He does an admirable job of debunking the myths of black box traders and provides a very entertaining narrative in the process." (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times bestselling author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan)

A decent addition, but not a good place to start

The stories of this financial fad are interesting and it adds some information missing from similar Wall Street books I’ve heard, so it’s worthwhile in that respect. For example, this book describes the origins of and people behind VaR and other statistical methods mentioned in other books.

It’s not very well written, though. The author uses too many clichés and often dips into unnecessary melodrama. He tries to get too fancy for his subject matter and it comes across like bad poetry. Chamberlain’s delivery doesn’t help matters, as he employs the singsong inflection favored by cheesy local TV reporters.

I wouldn’t recommend this as a first book for anyone interested in recent Wall Street antics, but for those who have read several and are looking for something more, this should be worth a credit.

A very interesting book

A great book to read. Very interesting and thoroughly researched. Excellent narration. However a few negatives. Quite a lot of repetition around chapters 11+. Feels like a few hundred pages should have been left out. Also quite a lot of AQR/ Chris Asness bashing which I think went too far. After losing its way somewhat the book redeems itself in the last two chapters.

Welcome to 21st century investing!

This was a great reminder/education to an individual investor of the larger machine operating 24x7 around me, and how impossible the notion of being outright "smarter than the market" is in individual investing! Staying small and nimble is the only way individual investors can consistently outperform the machine.

Well Writtent but Doesn't Get to the Root Causes

I found this book entertaining to listen to but I don't believe it gets to the root causes of the financial disaster. I'm currently reading The Black Swan and I find this much more insightful about the fundamental causes of financial crisis. The author of this book wants to confine his discussion to how the quants models were broken but doesn't want to discuss how bankers, government officials, and everyone else was in some way responsible for the downturn. If you are looking for an entertaining look inside the world of hedge funds this would be a good place to start. However, if you are trying to find a book that gets to the causes of the financial crisis I would start somewhere else.

Really good book

If you have some background in mathematics or economics and enjoy non-fiction books that read like fiction, you should like this book. Patterson does a great job of developing the characters and explains the technical elements clearly. Even if you don't have a great background in math, you probably will still enjoy it but probably not as much as I did. I can't attest to whether it's accurate or not -- some internet reviews of the book imply the author might have gotten a few things wrong. Also, if you're looking for a book that explains the primary reasons for the financial collapse (ie, the subprime loans and the investment banks bundling them into credit default swaps) this is not the book. The primary players do not have a major role in causing the crisis and bank failures.

This is a fascinating story

This book is very interesting and very well written. The story itself should be called "A confederacy of dunce geniuses". What is inspiring about this story is that it could have only happened in America. Only in America would the conditions be correct for a group of men be so egotistical, "irrationally exuberant", and innovative to the point that they are able to get billions and billions of dollars of other peoples money to invest and make themselves rich in the process, but they did this without ever creating a single thing to sell except paper.

It also goes to show that the love and creation of money for money's sake is a notion this inherently sick. Behind the study of greed and money for money's sake is a study of personality types. The narcissism of geeks and the drives that this creates is a worth studying all by itself.

Great introductory read on important Quant Finance characters

This book is a good overview of how quant finance came to be, and who the important people are. A good introductory read.

Sensational, but good

My first impression, after the first chapter or so, was to regret my purchase. But I came around on it.


The bad: The book is sensationalized. Instead of putting things in plain straightforward language, the author chooses to phases such as "every trading system known to God" (to describe the deal some young trader got with his broker). The narrator doesn't help with the sensational aspect, but he generally does a good job. The author can't refer to a mathematician without saying "whiz" or "genius". It is painful if you can't get used to it, and I'm sure that's why the other reviewer hated the book. It can seem insulting to anyone who already knows something about wall street.


The good: The book actually has a lot of information in it and seems to be well researched. Some of the conclusions and observations made along the way make sense. He describes complex issues well.

Great history of the stock market and key events that led to the Great recession

For those that don’t know much about the history of quants and their impact on the stock market, this is a great read. This isn’t a how-to, but rather a history lesson in the risks and rewards of highly specialized mathematicians and hedge funds.

Outstanding history of modern finance

Fascinating history and engaging story. This book won't teach you trading edges and that is clearly not it's goal. But if you want to understand the history of how we arrived at our modern markets, this is an excellent book.