Managing a Hedge Fund: A Complete Guide to Trading, Business Strategies, Risk Management, and Regulations

If you aren't familiar with hedge funds and need a book that explains it in layman's terms, this is the book for you. The title is a little misleading since it should be more appropriately named "A Primer on Hedge Funds" The author introduces what hedge funds are and its affects on portfolio performance and then explains various hedge fund strategies and how to measure hedge fund performance. The wealth of data presented in the book is well worth the money by itself. The author presents information such as tables on the Sharpe Ratios by strategy, Sortino Ratios by strategy, as well as correlations of the various hedge fund strategies to each other and to the S & P 500 during up and down markets and to the MSCI Debt index in up and down markets. The text is well written and an easy read. If you want more details on hedge funds in highly quantitative terms and have the background to understand them then you're better off reading articles from the Journal of Finance, Journal of Derivatives, Journal of Fixed Income, or other publications of this nature. Overall, if you are new to hedge funds and want to get your bearings on this hot topic, then this book is an excellent starting point.

Mr. Black's book on hedge funds offers a straightforward no-nonsense approach to understanding hedge funds. The book is written in such a way that a person not enrolled in a masters degree in finance can get a basic understanding of fees, the various strategies and the required due diligence of the funds. As hedge funds are obviously becoming more and more mainstream, it is imperative that the general public has a source, which describes to them how hedge funds work and how it applies directly to them. This book is said source and should be viewed as such. As a student of Mr. Black's and of the school where he teaches, I have found him insightful and inspiring during lectures. He combines current market trends and various hedge fund scandals into the discussion making the topic come alive and real. In my opinion, he is an asset to the school and any student who has the opportunity to take his course should seize it!

What a joy it was to read Keith Black's book. It is clearly written, covers a wide range of important areas and moves appropriately from simplicity to complexity and back. I am also quite impressed by the amount of visual elements complimenting the text. It will stimulate the neurons on both sides of the reader's brain! Keith Black's work is best written book I've read on hedge funds to date!

I read this book and found it to be a good complement to all the bits and pieces of the hedge fund industry floating around. You can never find a complete guide but this book puts it all together. My fiance (N.Fok) actually learned from Keith Black (now a professor at IIT, a university in Chicago that is one of the highly rated financial engineering programs). My fiance used to rave about his professor by himself. Now I rave with him. I work at a buy side shop and found this book to be very helpful in understanding strategies and the background of hedge funds.

Hedge funds can be arcane and complicated investments, and difficult to understand. Black is able to sift through all the complexity and lay the "parts on the table" for analysis. At a time when the interest in alternative investments is gaining momentum, readers of this book will benefit from Black's excellent guidance on the subject. It provides in-depth background for investors who want to enter the alternatives world, and entrepreneurial investment manangers that are ready to start their own hedge funds.