Hedge Hogging

Hedgehogging is one of the most instructive, fascinating, and inherently entertaining investment books of this or any year. Written by legendary Wall Street investor and executive Barton Biggs, it provides an impressionistic view of ?professional investors as well as the agony and ecstasy that are endemic to this frenetic and highly competitive world.The book tells of the successes and the failures of these men and women. It unveils the moral code that they live by, and describes their different life styles and operating patterns. It also relates the adventures and travails of these incredibly intense and obsessed investment personalities, their peculiarities, and the stresses they experience. Hedgehogs are strange, insecure, but fascinating characters, preying on each other and other investors in the battle for investment survival.Biggs was an English and Creative Writing major at Yale who studied under Robert Penn Warren. His book is populated with a mixture of real identifiable people and real disguised people as well as with occasional fiction. There is no exaggeration. Everything except for one whimsical tale, which is completely fictional, actually happened. Stories of investment adventures and individual journeys, both triumphs and disasters, are related, but there are no answers, only retrospective wisdom. The book is not an investment primer nor does it tell how to start a hedge fund, although it does recount some of Biggs's experiences in the formation of his fund. However, there are chapters that describe the way others¿ranging from Count Otto von Bismarck to the Yale Endowment¿have dealt with the battle for investment survival, and it provides a model of how hedge funds might be employed in a modern portfolio. Inevitably some of Biggs's investment biases surface. Hands-on experience is an unparalleled teacher, and Barton Biggs has seen and experienced the highs and lows of Wall Street as few others have. Now, Biggs has written about the professional investment world in general and hedgehogs in particular. As engaging, blunt, and intellectually provocative as its author, Hedgehogging pulls back the curtain to provide a rare insider's look at what actually goes on, both in Wall Street's corner offices, at dinner meetings, and in the highly competitive, lucrative world of hedge fund management.