Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street

Well, that is what the heading states and honestly, it is a book that one can skip. Surprisingly, this has a good rating by "amazon.com", something that I truly value. This book is a combination of a board room drama and acts of forgery committed by one person. People who have read 'Barbarians at the Gate' and 'Once in Golconda' should be able to relate the story.

Few comments that I felt making it less inspiring to read that being advertised, my primary reason for purchase.

It has been elaborately written, if anything, much more than required. It was like reading first half of Barbarian at the Gate, which was quite a drag compared to the second. The board room struggle is something that one can really understand. This book, at best differs on one aspect. The management is at the defense unlike most other books where the board is kept in the dark. However, this goes to the other extreme. One does feel that the protagonist deserves some sympathy, after the ordeal he goes through. However, the author painfully reconstructs the scenario, most of which am sure are hard to get, but largely serves little purpose.

The degree of crime involved is hardly anything to speak of: less than 100,000 dollars, largely being petty thefts.

The book finally attempts to tell that it broke a wide spread scandal in Hollywood. However, after having read it, there is nothing substantial that warrants such a claim.


Anyways, my suggestion. Read this book when you are free and you should be able to complete the book in about two days. It is a bit expensive so re-think before buying it.

A Demon of our Design

My first book after an extended study vacation that probably served no purpose to me. The book essentially tries to answer a simple question: Why is every new crash create larger impacts given that markets attempt to become more complex and strive to become efficient in its attempt to reduce impacts? To answer this, the author discusses many things mentioned below and the role played by hedge funds. He argues that merely blaming these funds as a cause for all disasters do not serve any purpose.


First, He does argue beautifully albeit in an elaborate manner, why added complexity serves no purpose: the possibilities of a mistake, as minor as it can seem, can lead to a big disaster. Adding layers to reduce disasters serves no purpose. The steps that preceded the disaster of Chernobyl and Valujet. I was really wondering why the author was spending such a large amount of time discussing the obvious point. It was an important point anyways.

Second, he argues for simple financial structures given that they have non-linear payoffs, the complexities that gets added due to globalization. He correctly assesses the risks of having MTM instruments, something that we saw in the current crisis.

Third, he advocates low leverage and consequently lower liquidity leading to lesser crash impact

The definition and importance of hedge funds was explained in a fair detail but one can clearly sense a bias on that one. Discussion on reducing inefficiency in the market, playing a vital role of providing liquidity to the market, transferring risk etc.

There is a good discussion on the functioning of a good fund: how much money can be played when information hits the market, importance of understanding how money is moving, continuous flow of information and how they are absorbed in the market, driving factors for investing in a specific stock and more.

There are some discussions for people who are interested in derivatives. However, I found that segment relatively unexciting. Overall I don’t think one really misses too much if one does not read this book. Hence, I would say…read it when you are really short of books on hand.

One of the good lines to take from the book: John Merriweather, “The hurricane is not more or less likely to hit because more insurance has been written. In financial markets, this is not true. The more people write financial insurance, the more likely it is that the disaster will happen because the people who know you have sold the insurance can make it happen.”