Excellent Reviews of Excellent Books

Review: – Disclaimer: the German version comes as a trilogy, and I only read the first book about macro strategists, so technically this review only applies to one third of Hedge Fund Market Wizards. – Trading is easy now. Hundreds of online brokers and trading systems contend for your attention. Each one offers lower transaction fees, more professional analysis tools, better training videos and access to more exotic underlyings than the next. Trading consistently successful, however, is actually pretty hard. Like its predecessors (Market Wizards,  New Market Wizards, and Stock Market Wizards), Hedge Fund Market Wizards, contains a series of interviews with successful traders. Author Jack Schwager, himself a recognized trading expert and fund manager, sat down with some of the top hedge fund managers to discuss their personal background and strategies. There is a lot more to trading than you would initially think. Some people trade systematically (using an algorithm to decide about trades), some are discretionary (using their intuition). There are trend followers (expecting a momentary trend to continue for some time) and those who expect a trend to revert to the mean. Some analyze fundamental market data, some just look at price charts. And I’m still taking…

Review Have you ever been to an evening event, and during polite conversation somebody suddenly steers the topic towards modern technology? And while everybody else is excitedly discussing the implications of the latest fad, you find yourself standing silently in a corner, because for you “Big Data” is your collection of adult movies on your harddrive? Do you need a shortcut to sounding like a technology “have”? This book got you covered. After steam engines, electricity and the computer revolution, Schwab sees the world in the middle of a new, fourth industrial revolution. While still based on computers, this new phase is characterised by the rapid saturation of society on all levels, and innovative use of technology. The author takes us on a tour through our modern world and highlights almost everything hot and new from the last couple of years, from 3D printing to gene sequencing, from drones to blockchain, from designer organisms to the internet of things. The nicest part is a brief overview of 23 disruptive technological trends with convenient good/bad/controversial bullet point lists, if you have too little time to read the full book. The author groups those trends into physical, digital and biological categories (because…