Running Money: Hedge Fund Honchos, Monster Markets and My Hunt for the Big Score

I read books to learn and to be entertained. What I learned (but already knew) was the history of the tech stock craze in the later 90s. But Kessler also frames this around the Industrial Revolution and the development of the steam engine. That may be the one weakness in the book as an inordinate amount of time is spent on this analogy. It works but takes a while to get there.While he doesn't go in to great depth of the investing strategy, he does go through the general philosophies of what they were looking for and examples when they were successful. And he does it in an entertaining style.What does come through is the unique partnership he had with Fred and how it worked. Particularly at the end when they recognized the money and market were just too hot and they needed to pull back. That sounds easy in hindsight but anyone who was investing or managing money at that time will tell you how difficult it is to turn investors off after the great difficulty in getting their money.Where this book really shines is pure entertainment. With the exception of the steam engine analogy, this is a fast entertaining read written in a very witty style. Kessler is a gifted writer and I wouldn't be surprised to see him move to novels eventually. This book is like a perfect college class: you get entertained but learn something also. I strongly recommend this book to investors or anyone with interest in the history of technology companies.

Kessler understands finance

Should be read by anyone interested in the evolution of financial markets especially in the current hedge funds era. Andy writes in a simple, clear and humoristic way. Being simple and clear is not simple. Especially in the financial arena where writers want to sound "encyclopedic" for other reasons rather than being instructive. I learned about the Industrial Revolution, Intellectual Property, the current era of mental misery, horizontality, augmenting humans and so forth. Worthwhile buying it and not lending it...so good you won't get it back for sure. You may also want to read "Wall St Meat."

"Running Money" picks up where Andy Kessler's previous book, "Wall Street Meat" (which portrays his life as a Wall Street-based semiconductor industry stock analyst and investment banker), left off. Kessler left Wall Street to run a Palo Alto-based hedge fund with one partner, raising money from wealthy individuals and groups, and investing it in latter-stage startup and public technology companies. He had the, in retrospect, incredibly fortuitous timing (as he himself admits) to open a five year fund in 1996, which forced him to liquidate the fund and lock in his profits as the tech bubble was bursting in 2001 (in fact, he disperses his last cash just days before 9/11).But Kessler's success, as he proves in the highly entertaining and also thought provoking "Running Money", is not merely the product of providential timing. His insider's view of the hedge fund industry shows how many of these funds don't even attempt to do fundamental stock analysis, but instead seek out market distortions that they can profit from (for a while, at least). Kessler, by contrast, stays true to his stock analyst roots and attempts to find great companies possessing a strong economic and technological advantage in a market about to undergo rapid growth. He struggles initially, but eventually uses an interesting combination of old world thinking (by analyzing the history of the steam power-driven Industrial Revolution) and radical new era economics (described below) to identify some winners. His story of the small niche semiconductor company he found which benefited immensely from the MP3 music piracy fad, at the same time that Napster and the record companies were losing their shirts, is a great case study for technology investing.If "Running Money" were nothing more than a series of case studies and anecdotes about the investments Kessler made, it would be a fairly lightweight book. The anecdotes are indeed amusing, especially Nick Moore's scathing trashtalking of technology companies (Moore has a humorous nickname for every technology company, e.g. "Scam-azon"). But fortunately, in the final section, Kessler ponders the deeper question of what his success means about the current economy. It is here that Kessler voices some fairly radical opinions and theories that certainly deserve to get discussed and tested.Kessler's radical opinion is that traditional economists, who are very cognizant of and worried about the trade deficit that the United States has been running since the 1970s, are not properly accounting for what truly matters in today's economy: wealth and profits. Because so much US manufacturing has moved abroad, and because the design of those products (i.e. the intellectual property) is still heavily centered in the US, the US does not receive any economic "credit" on the trade balance sheet when those designs are shipped to overseas factories. What is counted, of course, are the manufactured products that come back into this country, and that produces a large deficit. But since manufacturing is such a cutthroat business, whereas companies focused on developing intellectual property (e.g. Microsoft, Intel, pharmaceutical companies, and even Nike) command such high margins (profits) and pay their employees well, the resulting arrangement is highly beneficial to the living standard of the US. "We think, they sweat", sums up Kessler in his typical smart-alecky style. The low-priced products which flow into this country, along with the capital which finances some of our government's budget deficit, are our rewards for this mutually beneficial relationship.Needless to say, these views are highly controversial. Yet Kessler forcefully states his arguments, and also has more than a little evidence on his side. He deserves credit for formulating these views, and thereby making "Running Money" more than just a breezy rags-to-riches technology boom era story.

I like books by Andy Kessler, yet this one took a lot of detours and seemed to have overlaps from another book he wrote. The book was informative and funny and entertaining to read, I just wish it would have followed a more linear path, instead of having all the chapter tangents.

This book really does crystallize the concept of "follow the money". It is direct, intuitive and just flat out an amazing read. Great job Mr. Kessler.

I've enjoyed everything Andy has written (in newspapers, magazines and books) and this book is a wonderful description of the joys and tribulations of a hedge fund. Although its obvious that running a tech oriented hedge fund in the "bubble years" of the late 90's was a different kettle of fish than running a hedge fund in normal times, Kessler's philosophic endeavors near the end of the book, discussing the advantages of American capitalism is,in and of itself, worth the price of admission. Thanks Andy.

This book "should have" been great but after finishing it I checked my notes and there simply wasn't enough applicable ideas or thoughts that have any benefits to myself. I try to find some nuggets that can help me become a better trader/investor and this book couldn't pull it off. I've become suspicious of books that have quoted conversations, endless amounts of them, that provide narratives but appear more like a fictional book. Time is precious, use you time to read other valuable books.