Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for...

Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions | Ben Mezrich | Other people's money

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Ugly Americans: Th...

	Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions Ben Mezrich Harper Perennial, 2005 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 85 reviews view larger image
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The 5 hour book...

I purchased "Ugly Americans" on my way to New York from Los Angeles and was finished by the time we landed. The book keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. It is a fast paced story about hedge fund traders and their activities in the Asian markets.
Unfortunately, the book is not very technical and, therefore, written for the average reader. If you a financially savy individual the book may be too rudimentary from a financial perspective. Regardelss it is a very entertaining book.

Sven Klein, Santa Barbara, CA

Other people's money

Writing a bad book about Japan may not be such a dumb idea these days when you've got friends in the movie business and you know that all those guys basically want is a treatment. Their conversation might go something like this: "OK, let me see if I get this: Young American football player, a working class kid, gets on a plane, hits it off with a beautiful babe, makes a big score with some financial hot-shot, gets chased by the mob. Sure, like Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen - that Gordon Gekko movie Oliver Stone made a couple of years back. Sure, set it in Tokyo, lotsa local color, get some geesher girls and yakoooza in it, sure thing."

No?

Because if it weren't such an excellent puff-piece for the movies, everything else about this book would be awful in the extreme - the sort of book Jay McInerney might have written if he'd wanted to do something in the way of Grisham - The Firm say, an action novella set in Japan which Jay just happens to know a little about.

OK, other reviewers have picked out some of the obvious factual bloopers, I will add just a few more observations. The Big Trade - the one that is supposed to show these guys' astonishing intellect, their dazzling courage and their well-deserved revenge on Japan? It was a lay-up, and much of the actual dealing in the Nikkei names was done by their employers, the big Wall Street banks like Nikko-Salomon and Lehman Bros. The Nikkei itself was an aberration, one of the few price-weighted indices left in the world, and it is largely the fault of the newspaper for announcing the big rebalancing that took out the old-fashioned illiquids - stocks of thinly-traded companies from another era - and replaced them with modern large-cap stocks that filled the Topix index. But the trade itself was not a uniquely great idea of some inspired genius - it was an accidental but massive arbitrage opportunity, easily picked up from the media well in advance, that simply transferred enormous wealth from passive index funds to hands-on traders who could sell short the illiquids and go long the big caps well before the global index funds could follow-through with the same trade.

As for the Ferraris, the naughty Norikos and the men in white shoes, the uncomfortable reality not portrayed in the book is that many of these traders were and still are ordinary working stiffs, married with kids, whose idea of a wild time might be Bacardi night at Magumbos or topless beer-garden in Shimbashi with the feisty Svetlana or Irina from Rumania. Sure, some of the 30-somethings have their Modenas and Ducatis - but they're usually picked up when a Deutsche or Royal Bank goes on a shopping spree and ends up paying huge guaranteed bonuses to people who probably won't earn back what they're being paid.

What's my point?

Yes - Tokyo markets have made some of these people millions - but that is usually because few if any of them take any real risk. OPM, or "Other People's Money" is what usually pays for their toys, their fun and games, and the tall tales they put on for gullible writers.

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Good fiction but lousy finance

Good fiction and enjoyed it like a John Grisham book minus the heart pounding experience. Its not often that you find a fiction that covers finance, as a subject material, by an author, who is familiar with the jargon and environment. Like Scott Turow writing about fiction in legal settings, it covers the hedge fund world in Japan with some degree of familiarity.

However, similar to many other reviewers' comments, I was disappointed with several incorrect and weak areas in the book. Based loosely on stories of Michael Lerch in Japan, there are several superficial observations about Japan and financial markets. Gas Panic in Roppongi has been there since the beginning of time and is merely a tourist trap for traveling writers. Same is true about Soapland, but a lot more expensive. At the time of the book, index arb trading was pretty much wiped out by electronic interfaces in Asia (Hong Kong was the last to convert to fully automated electronic trading in '00).

For successful traders in Japan, there are many more settings in Japan than the author knows. In the countryside like Nikko (north), Shimoda (south), or Yuzawa (west), several well known foreign and domestic players have some of the finest retreats. That doesn't even begin to cover the colorful areas around Nara or Hiroshima. But of course, these retreats and eventful corners of Japan neither have the sizzling geisha stories nor the drama of yakuza gangsters around every street corner. And, it would take the author a little more research than just a few bars and train rides in Tokyo.

In short, entertaining fiction to read, but C+ on the finance topic and research.

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Disappointed with the content

I bought this book hoping to find a detailed story of how these graduates made millions in the overseas market. At best the author just skimmed the surface of the actual tactics used by the traders, and instead focused on the Japanese sex trade as the highlight of the book. While this book may make a excellent script for a hollywood blockbuster, its value as an in-depth analysis of trading is poor.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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