A Man for All Markets From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market

If you ever want to feel like a complete idiot waste of space and that your life is amounted to next to nothing this is a perfect memoir to read.

Edward Thorp was the man that oddly I had learned about several times in my life without making the connection that it was all the same person. Having partially red how to beat the dealer back in high school and then later equally temporarily obsessed with quantitative trading and how hedge funds worked I had been learning about the work of Edward thorp for years.

This was an amazing book that if your ego can take it everyone should read. The author by any measure of the word is a genius having influenced human life on Earth as much as any one might hope to do. His work in the mathematics of blackjack alone was enough to cement historical and groundbreaking life but after essentially inventing card counting he next invented the very concept of a hedge fund.

In broad strokes card counting in blackjack is giving is a signing a1 to every card above an 8 -1 every card below a 6 and a 02 everything else. Just keeping this some in your mind as you play you'll gain and statistical advantage over the dealer if you increase your bet as the sum grows. Hedge funds initially where designed to have just above a zero-sum gain where for every purchase in the market an attempt would be made to purchase an equal amount of a security that move inversely to the first.

I really like this book and admire the man as much as anyone but my God doesn't make you feel small to hear about the regular and mass of accomplishments this man had over his lifetime.