Hedge Fund Investing by Kevin Mirabile - Closing Thoughts
So we made it through all 12 chapters of Kevin Mirabile’s “Hedge Fund Investing.” Here’s what stuck with me after going through the whole thing.
Investing
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 12 Part 2: Service Providers - Auditors and Tech
In the first part of Chapter 12, we covered fund administrators and prime brokers. Now we get into the other critical service providers: auditors, lawyers, and technology firms. These are less flashy but just as important. A hedge fund without a good auditor is like a restaurant without a health inspector. Maybe everything is fine. Maybe you don’t want to know.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 12 Part 1: Service Providers - Admin and Brokers
When you think about hedge funds, you think about traders and portfolio managers. Maybe a genius founder in a corner office making billion-dollar bets. But behind every hedge fund is a small army of service providers doing work that nobody talks about. Chapter 12 is about those people.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 11 Part 2: Due Diligence - Risk and Fraud
Part 1 covered how to prepare for due diligence and evaluate a fund’s investment process. Now comes the hard stuff. Risk management, operations, the business model, and the part nobody wants to think about: fraud.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 11 Part 1: Due Diligence Preparation
Due diligence. Sounds boring. But this is the chapter where you learn how to not lose your money to the next Madoff. So maybe pay attention.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 10: Fund Terms and Incentives
Why do hedge fund managers charge so much? And does paying more actually get you better results? Chapter 10 of Mirabile’s book tackles this. Turns out, the way you structure a fund’s fees and terms has a real effect on how the manager behaves. And how the manager behaves determines your returns.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 9: Measuring Performance
You would think measuring how well a hedge fund did is simple. Fund went up 10%? Great. Down 3%? Bad. Done.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 8: Multistrategy Funds and Funds of Funds
So you want diversified hedge fund exposure but don’t want to pick individual managers yourself. Chapter 8 covers your two main options: multistrategy funds and funds of hedge funds (FoF). There is also a third option, index replication, that has been gaining traction. Same goal, very different execution. Let’s break it down.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 7: Convertible Arbitrage Strategies
Convertible arbitrage sounds complicated. And honestly, the mechanics are not trivial. But the core idea is surprisingly simple. You buy a convertible bond. You short the stock of the same company. Then you try to profit from the difference.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 6: Fixed Income Relative Value and Credit Arbitrage
This chapter is about bond nerds. Specifically, hedge fund managers who make money by finding small price differences between bonds that should be priced the same (or very close). The strategies are called fixed income relative value and credit arbitrage. They sound boring. But the math behind them is wild.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 5 Part 2: Long/Short Equity Risk and Returns
In Part 1 we covered how long/short equity funds work, the five strategy types, and how they construct portfolios. Now let’s look at the business side: fees, redemptions, historical performance, and how investors evaluate these managers.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 5 Part 1: Long/Short Equity Basics
Long/short equity is the most popular hedge fund strategy. It’s also the oldest. The very first hedge fund, started by Alfred Winslow Jones in 1949, was a long/short equity fund. He turned $100,000 into $4.8 million over 20 years. People noticed. By 1968, the SEC counted 140 funds copying his approach.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 4: Global Macro Investing
Global macro is the strategy people think of when they hear “hedge fund.” Big bets on currencies. Shorting entire economies. George Soros breaking the Bank of England. That kind of thing.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 3: Industry Trends and History
Chapter 3 is basically a timeline of the hedge fund industry. How it started small, got huge, almost died in 2008, and came back. If you want to understand where hedge funds are today, you need to know how they got here.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 2 Part 2: Pensions, Sovereign Wealth, and Funds of Funds
In Part 1 we covered the research behind hedge fund investing and how rich people, family offices, and endowments got into the game. Now let’s talk about the really big money: pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, and funds of funds. Plus, if hedge funds are so great, why doesn’t everyone just put 100% of their money there?
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 2 Part 1: Who Invests in Hedge Funds?
Hedge funds started back in the 1960s when Alfred Winslow Jones launched the first one. It was weird at the time because he used leverage and short selling. Nobody else was doing that. But the industry stayed small until the late 1980s.
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 1 Part 2: Strategies, Leverage, and Performance
In Part 1 we covered what alternative investments are and how hedge funds are structured. Now we get into the fun stuff. How do hedge funds actually make money? What strategies do they use? And how does leverage turn a 10% market gain into a 23% return?
Hedge Fund Investing Chapter 1 Part 1: What Are Alternative Investments?
Chapter 1 opens with a warning. If you’re new to hedge funds, you will get overwhelmed. There’s a lot of terminology. There’s a lot of moving pieces. But Mirabile does a good job laying the foundation here. Let’s walk through it.
Hedge Fund Investing by Kevin Mirabile - A Book Retelling Series
So I picked up this book called Hedge Fund Investing: A Practical Approach to Understanding Investor Motivation, Manager Profits, and Fund Performance by Kevin R. Mirabile. And honestly, it’s one of those books that sounds intimidating but actually breaks things down pretty well.
Wrapping Up Behavioral Finance by Burton and Shah - Final Thoughts
Twenty-five posts. That is what it took to retell this book. And honestly, when I started this series back on February 4th, I was not sure I would finish it. A post a day for almost a month is a lot. But here we are.
Behavioral Finance vs Efficient Markets - Who Actually Wins?
So after all the chapters, all the experiments, all the arguments back and forth, Burton and Shah finally ask the big question. Who wins? Is the market efficient or not? Time for a new theory entirely?
Experimental Economics and Market Bubbles in the Lab
Can you grow a stock market bubble inside a classroom? Not a metaphor. An actual bubble where prices rise above what everyone in the room knows the thing is worth?
Neuroeconomics - Your Brain on Money Decisions
You know all those behavioral biases we talked about in earlier chapters? Loss aversion, status quo bias, overconfidence. The big question hanging over all of them is simple. Where do they come from? Are we born with them? Did we learn them from our parents and culture? Or is there something deeper going on inside our actual brains?
Why Liquidity Matters More Than You Think
Try selling your house by tomorrow. Not in a month, not after listing it and staging it and waiting for offers. Tomorrow. For cash.
The Equity Premium Puzzle - Why Stocks Beat Bonds by So Much
Stocks make more money than bonds. Everyone knows that. But here’s the thing. They make way more money than bonds. And when economists tried to explain why the gap is so big, they couldn’t. Not with their standard models. Not even close.
Calendar Effects in the Stock Market - January, Weekends, and Holidays
What if I told you that the day of the week affects your stock returns? Or that one specific month is consistently better than the other eleven? Sounds like astrology for finance people, right?
Finishing Up: The Future of Private Capital
We’ve reached the end of our retelling of Cyril Demaria’s “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt and Real Assets.” It’s been quite a journey—from Christopher Columbus to multi-billion dollar mega-funds.
Short-Term Momentum in Stocks - Why Winners Keep Winning
Every trader has said something like this at some point: “The stock has good fundamentals, it’s cheap, but the price action looks terrible. I’m going to wait.”
Mean Reversion - Value vs Growth Stocks and the Overreaction Debate
Benjamin Graham is probably the most famous contrarian investor who ever lived. Together with David Dodd, he invented what we now call value investing. The whole idea is simple. Buy stocks that other people don’t like. Stocks with low prices compared to their earnings or book value. Cheap stocks. Unpopular stocks.
Fama-French and Predicting Stock Prices
In 1992 two economists published a paper that accidentally shook the foundations of modern finance. They did not mean to. They were actually trying to defend the system. But what they found in the data was so clear and so stubborn that it changed how everyone thought about stock prices.
The Illusions That Make Investors Overconfident
You ever played the Madden NFL video game? For years, EA Sports put a top player on the cover. And then something funny kept happening. The cover athlete would have a terrible next season. Injuries, bad stats, team losses. Fans started calling it the Madden Curse. Some players actively tried to avoid being on the cover.
Causality and Statistics Traps in Investing
Every day you make decisions based on past data. What to eat for breakfast. How to approach your boss with a question. You look at what happened before and try to predict what will happen next.
Inertial Effects - Why Investors Hold on Too Long
People are sticky. Not physically. Mentally. We stick to whatever we already have, whatever is already happening, whatever is the default. And this stickiness costs investors real money every single day.
Perception Biases That Mess With Your Money Decisions
You know that feeling when you buy a stock right after seeing a scary headline, and then two weeks later you wonder what you were thinking? That’s a perception bias doing its work on your brain.
Chapter 1: The Heart of the Machine - The Entrepreneur
We’ve talked about history, but let’s get into the real engine of private equity: the entrepreneur.
Cyril Demaria makes one thing very clear: without entrepreneurs, private equity has no reason to exist. The entrepreneur is the one who takes a bunch of separate pieces—time, money, ideas—and turns them into something way bigger than the sum of its parts.
Prospect Theory - Why Losing Hurts More Than Winning Feels Good
You know that feeling when you lose a $20 bill on the street? It ruins your whole afternoon. But finding $20 on the street? Nice, sure. You smile for maybe five minutes and forget about it.
The Myth of the Rational Investor
Economics has a favorite character. The Rational Man. He always knows what he wants. He always picks the best option. He never panics, never gets confused, never makes a dumb choice because he’s tired or emotional.
Investing Psychology: A Journey Into the Investor's Mind
I’ve spent over 20 years in IT and a lot of time looking at charts and numbers. One thing I’ve learned is that the math is often the easy part. The hard part is the gray matter between your ears.
Technical Traders and Herd Behavior in Markets
You ever watch financial news and hear someone say “the market broke through resistance” or “the market looks tired”? These phrases sound like the market is some living creature with feelings. And if you come from a science background, your first reaction is probably: what does that even mean?
Introduction to PE Part 5: Why We Get Private Equity Wrong
Because it’s so hard to get good data on private equity, people start taking shortcuts. And those shortcuts lead to some big mistakes.
Noise Trading Feedback Models - When Traders Feed Off Each Other
Remember the dot-com bubble? Companies with zero profit, sometimes zero revenue, trading at insane valuations. Analysts invented new ways to justify the prices. “Forget earnings, count the eyeballs!” And for a while, it worked.
Introduction to PE Part 4: The Business of Data in Private Markets
I already talked about why private companies are so secretive. But there’s a whole industry built on trying to find their secrets anyway.
The Shleifer Model - How Noise Traders Survive in Markets
For decades, traditional finance people had a simple answer to the noise trader problem. Milton Friedman said it. Eugene Fama said it. Fischer Black said it. The answer was: irrational traders will lose their money to smart traders and disappear.
Introduction to PE Part 3: The Secret World of Private Markets
One of the biggest problems with private companies is that they don’t have to tell you anything. In the stock market, companies have to share their financial reports all the time. But in the private world, there’s no law saying they have to.
Noise Traders and Why Prices Can Be Wrong
Economics has a rule that sounds so obvious it barely needs saying. If two things are identical, they should have the same price. If they don’t, someone will buy the cheap one and sell the expensive one until prices meet in the middle. Easy. Done. Move on.
Before Behavioral Finance - Wall Street Folklore and Value Investing
Before behavioral finance became a real academic field, people already knew something was off with markets. Traders in the 1920s had their own rules. Value investors in the 1930s had theirs. And nobody was waiting for professors to tell them the market was irrational. They lived it every day.
Introduction to PE Part 2: The Confusion Between PE and LBO
The words “private equity” get thrown around a lot. But people use them in different ways, and it gets really confusing.
Introduction to PE Part 1: More Than Just Equations
Cyril Demaria started this book because he couldn’t find anything good to read about private equity. Most of what was out there just didn’t make sense. It didn’t match what actually happens in the real world.
The Market Model and CAPM Basics for Regular People
Chapter 2 of Burton and Shah’s book is about the math behind stock prices. Don’t run away yet. I promise to keep it simple. The chapter introduces something called CAPM and the “market model.” These are the tools that traditional finance uses to describe how stock prices should behave. And if you want to understand why behavioral finance matters, you need to know what it’s arguing against.
Let's Talk About Private Equity: Starting a New Book Series
I’ve been reading a lot of books on finance lately. Most of them are either too simple or way too complicated for anyone who doesn’t have a PhD in math. But I found one that actually makes sense. It’s called “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt and Real Assets” by Cyril Demaria.
The Efficient Market Hypothesis Explained Simply
Chapter 1 of Burton and Shah’s book gets right to the big idea. The Efficient Market Hypothesis. EMH for short. This is the theory that traditional finance is built on, and it is the thing behavioral finance tries to tear apart.
What Even Is Behavioral Finance? the Big Debate Explained
Let me tell you something that took me years to figure out. Traditional economics and finance are built on one really big assumption: that people are rational. And not just a little rational. Perfectly, mathematically, always-making-the-best-choice rational.
Retelling Behavioral Finance by Burton and Shah - Why Your Brain Is Bad at Investing
I’m starting something new here. Over the next 25 days, I’m going to retell the book Behavioral Finance: Understanding the Social, Cognitive, and Economic Debates by Edwin T. Burton and Sunit N. Shah.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
This is the last post in the series, and I want to step back from the details. No more beta coefficients or efficient-market debates. Just the big picture.
Picking Your Own Stocks: Rules and Final Strategies
We left off with Malkiel’s stock-picking rules and the suggestion to index the core of your portfolio. Now comes the rest of Chapter 15, where he tackles what to do if you’d rather let someone else do the work. And then he wraps up the whole book.
Index Funds and Smart Stock Picking Rules
After fourteen chapters of theory, history, and bubbles, Malkiel finally gets to the practical stuff. Chapter 15 is called “Three Giant Steps Down Wall Street.” It’s his playbook. Three ways to actually invest your money.
Investing at Every Age: A Life-Cycle Guide
A thirty-four-year-old and a sixty-four-year-old should not invest the same way. This seems obvious when you say it out loud. But a surprising number of people treat investing like it’s one-size-fits-all.
How to Predict Stock and Bond Returns
Chapter 13 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street is where Malkiel teaches you to be a financial bookie. Not the kind who takes bets on horse races. The kind who can look at the market and make a reasonable guess about what stocks and bonds will return over the long run. You still won’t be able to predict what the market does next month. But you’ll have a framework for setting realistic expectations.
Getting Your Financial House in Order
Chapter 12 is where Malkiel stops talking theory and starts telling you what to actually do with your money. He calls it “A Fitness Manual for Random Walkers,” and it’s basically a checklist of boring but essential financial steps you need to take before you start picking stocks. Think of it as stretching before a run. Skip it, and you’ll pull something.
Is the Stock Market Really Efficient?
Chapter 11 is where Malkiel fights back. After spending the last chapter letting behavioral finance people take their best shots at the efficient market theory, he rolls up his sleeves and defends it. Researchers have been trying to kill this theory for decades. Malkiel says they keep missing.
Your Brain Is Bad at Investing: Behavioral Finance
Up to this point in the book, Malkiel has described theories built on a simple assumption: investors are rational. They weigh risks, calculate value, and make sensible decisions. Chapter 10 throws all of that out the window. Because here’s the thing. People are not rational. And two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, spent decades proving it.
Risk and Reward: Understanding Beta and CAPM
Chapter 9 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street opens with a quote from George Stigler: “Theories that are right only 50 percent of the time are less economical than coin-flipping.” That’s a warning shot. Malkiel is about to walk us through some fancy academic models. And then he’s going to tell us they don’t quite work the way everyone hoped.
Modern Portfolio Theory: Your New Best Friend
Chapter 8 opens Part Three of the book, titled “The New Investment Technology.” We’re leaving behind the debate over whether analysts can predict stock prices. Now we’re entering the world of academic theories that actually changed how professionals invest.
Can Stock Analysts Really Predict the Future?
Chapter 7 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street asks a question that should make every investor uncomfortable. All those analysts on Wall Street, the ones in suits flying first class and talking earnings forecasts all day, can they actually predict the future? Malkiel digs into the evidence. And it’s not pretty.
Does Technical Analysis Actually Work?
Chapter 6 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street is where Malkiel stops being polite about technical analysis. He opens with a Gilbert and Sullivan quote: “Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream.”
Technical vs Fundamental Analysis: How the Pros Pick Stocks
Chapter 5 kicks off Part Two of the book: “How the Pros Play the Biggest Game in Town.” On a typical trading day, shares worth hundreds of billions change hands. Fresh Harvard Business School grads pull $200,000 salaries in good years. The top money managers handle over a trillion dollars in hedge fund assets.
The Dot-Com Crash and Housing Bubble Explained
The bubbles from the sixties through the nineties were bad. But compared to what happened in the early 2000s, they were rehearsals.
Wall Street Bubbles From the Sixties to the Nineties
After covering tulip mania and the South Sea Bubble, you might think Wall Street eventually learned its lesson. It didn’t. Chapter 3 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street is Malkiel’s tour through modern speculation, from the 1960s to the 1990s. And the twist? This time the “smart money” is doing the speculating.
Tulip Mania, South Sea Bubbles, and Other Market Madness
Chapter 2 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street is basically a horror movie. Except the monsters are regular people losing their minds over tulip bulbs, fake companies, and stocks they couldn’t afford. Malkiel walks us through three of history’s wildest financial bubbles, and the pattern is always the same. People get greedy, prices go insane, and then everything falls apart.
Two Ways to Value Stocks: Firm Foundations vs Castles in the Air
Chapter 1 of A Random Walk Down Wall Street opens with an Oscar Wilde quote: “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” That sets the tone for the whole book. Malkiel is about to spend hundreds of pages arguing that most people on Wall Street know the price of stocks but not their actual value.
Stock Market Cash Flow by Andy Tanner: A Book Retelling Series
If you’ve ever heard “just put your money in the stock market and wait,” you’re not alone. That’s pretty much the default advice everyone gets. Your parents say it. Financial advisors say it. Random people on the internet say it.
Why I'm Reading a Random Walk Down Wall Street
I picked up this book because I kept hearing the same advice everywhere: just buy index funds. But nobody really explained why. They’d say things like “you can’t beat the market” and leave it at that.
Hedge Fund Analysis Book Retelling: Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
And that’s a wrap on “Hedge Fund Analysis” by Frank J. Travers.
Over the past 20 posts, we went through the entire book, from the history of hedge funds all the way to the final scoring model. Here’s what I think you should take away from all of this.
Hedge Fund Scoring Model: Making the Final Investment Decision
Chapter 12 is the final chapter and it is where everything comes together. After all the sourcing, screening, interviewing, number crunching, operational checks, risk reviews, and reference calls, Travers shows us how to take all that work and turn it into a single, structured decision.
Hedge Fund Reference Checks: How to Verify Who You're Trusting With Money
Chapter 11 opens with a Reagan quote, “Trust but verify.” That pretty much sets the tone. You have spent hundreds of hours doing investment, operational, and risk due diligence on a hedge fund. But have you actually checked whether the people running it are who they say they are?
Risk Due Diligence: How to Spot Hidden Dangers in Hedge Funds
Chapter 10 opens with a Warren Buffett quote: “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” Hard to argue with that. Travers uses this chapter to walk us through the risk due diligence process, and honestly, some of the findings are pretty eye-opening.
Hedge Fund Operations Checklist: What to Verify Behind the Scenes (Part 2)
In Part 1 we covered the big picture of operational due diligence and why so many hedge fund failures trace back to operational problems. Now in Part 2, Travers lays out exactly what to check, what questions to ask, and then shows us a real example interview with the operations team at Fictional Capital Management (FCM).
Operational Due Diligence: How Hedge Fund Frauds Like Bayou Happen (Part 1)
Chapter 9 is where Travers shifts from talking about investment analysis to something most people overlook: the boring operational stuff that actually prevents you from losing all your money to fraud.
The Hedge Fund Book - Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
So I just finished walking through all nine chapters of Richard Wilson’s “The Hedge Fund Book.” And here’s what I think after going through the whole thing.
Inside a Hedge Fund Office: The FCM Onsite Visit Case Study (Part 2)
In Part 1 we covered the theory behind onsite interviews. Now Travers takes us inside the actual visit to Fictional Capital Management. This is where we get to see how all those interview techniques play out in a real (well, fictional but realistic) setting.
Onsite Hedge Fund Visits: Meeting Strategies and What to Watch for (Part 1)
You have done the phone calls, crunched the numbers, analyzed the portfolio. Now it is time to actually show up at the hedge fund’s office and talk to people face to face.
Evaluating Hedge Fund Portfolio Data and Construction (Part 2)
In Part 1 we looked at how to get portfolio data from 13F filings and started breaking down Fictional Capital Management’s long book. Now we continue with more portfolio metrics and, more importantly, the liquidity analysis that catches the fund manager in a contradiction.
Final Thoughts on Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets
So we made it through the whole book. Seventeen posts later, here’s where I stand on “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets” by Cyril Demaria (3rd edition, Wiley, ISBN 978-1-119-53737-3).
Business Case: How Advent International Made a Fortune in Brazilian Education
After eight chapters of theory, Demaria drops a real case study on us. Not a made-up example. An actual deal. Advent International investing in Kroton Educacional SA, a Brazilian education company. This is where all the concepts from the book come alive.
Hedge Fund Portfolio Analysis: Attribution and Fundamentals (Part 1)
Chapter 7 opens with two quotes. One from Bernard Madoff saying he can’t discuss his proprietary strategy, and one from George Soros about how it’s not about being right or wrong, but how much you make when right and how much you lose when wrong. That contrast alone tells you everything about why portfolio analysis matters.
Chapter 8: Where Private Equity Is Headed - The Conclusion
This is the final chapter. Demaria wraps up the whole book by looking forward. Where is private equity going? What are the big risks ahead? And could the industry actually destroy itself by being too successful? Let’s go through it.
Hedge Fund Quantitative Analysis: Measuring Returns and Risk
At this point in the book, we have collected the basic info from the hedge fund manager, done an initial review, and had a phone interview. Now comes the numbers part. Chapter 6 of “Hedge Fund Analysis” by Frank J. Travers is about crunching performance data, and it is packed with formulas and statistics.
Chapter 7: The Dark Side of PE - Greed, Destruction and the Push for Transparency
Every industry has a chapter it would rather skip. For private equity, this is that chapter. Demaria titles it “Private Equity and Ethics: A Culture Clash,” and he does not hold back. Fraud, job destruction, fake philanthropy, and the long fight for transparency. Let’s go through it.
Hedge Fund Manager Interviews: Meeting Notes and Follow-Up (Part 2)
In Part 1, we watched Travers set up and begin his initial phone call with Jaime Williams from Fictional Capital Management. Now we pick up where we left off, with the conversation getting into the really meaty stuff: asset growth, liquidity, short selling, risk management, and the all-important question of what makes this fund special.
Chapter 6: Is Private Equity Going Mainstream? Trends, Bubbles and Dry Powder
Private equity used to be the quiet kid in the back of the finance classroom. Small groups of rich people pooling money together to buy companies, fix them up, sell them. Nobody outside the industry really cared. That changed. PE firms got huge, went public, and started buying companies the size of small countries. Chapter 6 of Demaria’s book asks the obvious question: is private equity going mainstream? And if so, what does that mean for everyone involved?
How to Interview a Hedge Fund Manager: First Call Tips (Part 1)
You have done your homework. You read the DDQ, you looked at the presentation, you reviewed the monthly letters, and the numbers did not scare you away. Now what?
Chapter 5: The 7 Steps of a Private Equity Deal
You want to buy a company. Or at least a piece of one. How does that actually work? Chapter 5 of Demaria’s book lays it out in 7 steps. The whole thing takes 3 to 18 months depending on the deal. And really, the entire process boils down to one word: trust. Buyer and seller have to trust each other enough to make a deal happen. Let’s walk through it.
Hedge Fund Data Collection: 13F Filings and Beyond (Part 2)
In Part 1 we looked at what a Due Diligence Questionnaire (DDQ) is and how Travers uses it to collect initial data on a hedge fund. In this second part, we cover the rest of the DDQ, the other materials you should request, how to analyze performance data, and one of the most useful free tools out there: SEC 13F filings.
Chapter 4 Part 3: Private Debt, Real Estate and Other Alternative Assets
This is the final piece of Chapter 4. We covered venture capital, growth capital, LBOs and special situations before. Now Demaria walks us through the rest of the private markets universe: private debt, real assets, and a handful of other instruments that sit at the edges of the asset class.
Hedge Fund Data Collection: Where to Start Your Research (Part 1)
So you have narrowed your list of hedge fund candidates. You ran the screens, looked at the charts, compared the numbers. Now what?
Chapter 4 Part 2: Leveraged Buyouts and Special Situations - When PE Gets Serious
If venture capital is the glamorous part of private equity, LBOs are where the real money lives. According to Demaria, leveraged buyouts represent roughly 69% of all PE fund investments. This is the heavy machinery of finance, and Chapter 4 spends serious time explaining how it works.
Hedge Fund Due Diligence: A Step-by-Step Framework
Chapter 3 kicks off Part Two of the book, and this is where things get practical. We are done with the history lessons and strategy overviews. Now Travers rolls up his sleeves and shows us how to actually evaluate a hedge fund step by step.
Hedge Fund Fundamentals - What Are Hedge Funds and How Do They Work
Chapter 1 of “The Hedge Fund Book” by Richard C. Wilson kicks things off with the basics. And honestly, if you’ve ever wondered what a hedge fund actually is without getting a headache from finance jargon, this chapter does a solid job explaining it.
Chapter 4 Part 1: Venture Capital and Growth Capital - Funding the Next Big Thing
Chapter 4 is where Demaria gets into the actual strategies private equity funds use to make money. He starts with the one everyone has heard of: venture capital. The stuff that turns garage projects into billion-dollar companies. Or, more often, burns through cash and produces nothing.
The Hedge Fund Book Introduction - What You Need to Know First
The introduction of The Hedge Fund Book starts with a pretty bold question. What if you could sit down with 30 hedge fund veterans and just ask them everything? What if someone spent over $80,000 hiring professionals with 7 to 30 years of experience to share their best advice?
What Are Hedge Funds and How Do They Work? Strategies Explained
Chapter 1 gave us the history. Now in Chapter 2, Travers answers the big question: what actually is a hedge fund, and why would anyone put money into one?
Chapter 3 Part 3: Measuring PE Performance - IRR, Multiples and Why Benchmarks Are Tricky
So you want to know if a private equity fund is actually good? Turns out, that’s way harder than it sounds. There is no stock ticker refreshing every second. No public quarterly earnings call. You are stuck with imperfect tools and incomplete data. Welcome to Section 3.3 through 3.5 of Demaria’s book.
Hedge Fund History: LTCM, Tiger Fund, and Modern Hedge Funds (Part 2)
In Part 1, we covered the earliest roots of hedge funds, from Japanese rice traders to Karl Karsten’s statistical forecasting and Benjamin Graham’s value-oriented approach. Now we get to the person who took all those ideas and built something that actually changed Wall Street forever.
The Hedge Fund Book Preface - How Richard Wilson Got Into Hedge Funds
The preface of “The Hedge Fund Book” starts with Richard Wilson explaining why he wrote this thing in the first place. And honestly, his reason is pretty relatable. He read most hedge fund books out there over seven years and couldn’t find one that gave you straight, unfiltered advice from actual hedge fund managers.
Chapter 3 Part 2: How PE Funds Actually Work - Fees, Incentives and Power
So you have a bunch of big investors who want to put money into private equity but don’t want to pick companies themselves. What do they do? They hand their money to a fund manager and say “go make us rich.” Sounds simple. But the details of how that relationship works, how the fund manager gets paid, and what stops them from just enriching themselves at your expense? That is where it gets interesting.
Hedge Fund History: From Alfred Jones to George Soros (Part 1)
Chapter 1 of Travers’s book opens with a quote from Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” And then Travers immediately proves it by describing a 1970 article from Fortune magazine that sounds like it was written yesterday. Hedge funds losing money, managers getting overconfident, regulators circling. That article is from 1970. Let that sink in.
The Hedge Fund Book by Richard C. Wilson - A Book Retelling Series
I just finished reading “The Hedge Fund Book: A Training Manual for Professionals and Capital-Raising Executives” by Richard C. Wilson. And I wanted to share what I learned from it in a way that actually makes sense to normal people.
Chapter 3 Part 1: You're Already Investing in Private Equity (You Just Don't Know It)
Here’s something most people don’t realize. If you have a pension, pay insurance premiums, or even have a retirement savings account, there’s a good chance some of your money is sitting in private equity right now. You didn’t choose it. Nobody asked you. But that’s how the system works.
Hedge Fund Analysis Introduction: Why Evaluating Hedge Funds Is So Hard
There are somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 hedge funds out there. Let that sink in for a second. Even if you had infinite money, how would you figure out which ones are actually good?
Chapter 2 Part 2: Private Equity in Europe and Emerging Markets
In part 1 we talked about how the US basically invented private equity. Now the question is: can everyone else just copy the homework? Demaria’s answer is basically “it’s complicated.” Europe tried to adapt the American model. Emerging markets are still figuring things out. And the results are… mixed.
Retelling Hedge Fund Analysis by Frank J. Travers
I just finished reading “Hedge Fund Analysis: An In-Depth Guide to Evaluating Return Potential and Assessing Risks” by Frank J. Travers, and I want to break it down for you in a series of blog posts.
Chapter 2 Part 1: How the USA Built the Private Equity Machine
Chapter 2 of Demaria’s book opens with a fun question: is modern private equity a French invention? The word “entrepreneur” is French. The guy who basically created modern venture capital, Georges Doriot, was French. But he did it in America. At Harvard, not in Paris. That tells you something about where the conditions were right.
Chapter 1: The Wild Origins of Private Equity - From Columbus to Modern Finance
Chapter 1 of Cyril Demaria’s book opens with a story you probably did not expect in a finance textbook. Christopher Columbus. Yep, the guy with the ships.
What Is Private Equity Anyway? the Book's Introduction Explained
You would think that a thing called “private equity” would be easy to define. It has two words. One means private. The other means equity. Should be simple, right?
Beating the Street by Peter Lynch: Why This Book Still Matters
Book: Beating the Street by Peter Lynch with John Rothchild | ISBN: 978-0-671-75915-5
Peter Lynch ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund for 13 years. During that time, he turned every $1,000 invested into roughly $28,000. He bought more than 15,000 stocks. He beat the market almost every single year. And then, at age 46, he quit.
Retelling: Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets by Cyril Demaria
I just finished reading “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets” by Cyril Demaria (3rd edition, Wiley, ISBN 978-1-119-53737-3) and I wanted to share what I learned.