Supercash: The New Hedge Fund Capitalism

by James Altucher

Book Overview

"James Altucher is scary smart, and also a font of great and original ideas. So it's no surprise that SuperCa$h is so much fun to read and so devilishly informative. It is equally full of 'holy cow!' moments and 'why-didn't-I-think-of-that?' moments. A true keeper."
--Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics

"Altucher describes in easy-to-understand terms the strategies used by the smartest managers in the world--those who...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471745995
• ISBN13: 9780471745990
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Beyond the Reach of Retail Investors

James Altucher's third book, Supercash, is an ode signifying that the days of buy-and-hold are over. As easy-to-find alpha has been squelched in today's crowded, competitive markets, the next generation of hedge funds is devising more creative and unconventional techniques. Supercash examines these techniques and provides and interesting scoop into the cutting edge of Wall Street strategy. Some of the topics covered in this book may sound familiar: shareholder activism, lending money to clientele too risky or illiquid for the average bank, and piggybacking the Wall Street titans. However, Supercash also introduces a number of more exotic forms of investing that rarely get press: PIPEs, investing in rare art and collectibles, as well as a few quantitative or statistical-based ideas. Most of these innovative strategies leverage the scale and financial wizardry only available to a hedge fund, and therefore most of this book is of little use to the average retail investor. I must admit that a few ideas are presented in an opinionated light, as I disagreed with Altucher's defensive stance on short selling. Also, given the book was written before the recent global credit disaster, it would be interesting to read a follow-up on some of the credit-based strategies. My favorite chapter is "So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund," which provides some wisdom into the difficulties of launching your own fund. Surprisingly, accomplishing success sounds easier than you might think, but is also less lucrative than you might think. Supercash would probably be of little help to Average Joe's Ameritrade account, but is no doubt a fascinating read to Wall Street buffs and those who just like to learn about making money.

Timely Info!!

It never fails, I go on vacation it hits the fan.( I'm writing this on July 28th 2007 after the DJIA was down 4.2% the previous week and the Russell 2000 dropped 4.9%.) Every single time. Well in chaos there is opportunity. Coincidentally as the markets melting down I'm reading "Super Cash" by James Altucher and I should share his QQQQ Crash Revisited chapter; its revisited from his previous book, "Trade Like a Hedge Fund". In short it states that most of the time, in fact all the time from his sample timeframe of June 2003 - April 15th 2005 when the Q's drop over 1.5 standard deviations below the 10 day moving average (if you don't get that - it happened last week) it bounces - 55 of the last 55 times (at least short term.) This is an over simplification but it basically says to "buy the panic" If you take the NASDAQ 100 stock from Jan 1 1999 to Dec 31 2004 their were 3715 instances of this occurring (stocks dropping 1.5 standard deviations below their 10 day moving average) and if you bought them on the next morning and held until they were profitable or 20 days - whichever happened first, you would have made money on 3,518 of them or 94.7% turning $1 million into about $9 million if you traded all of them and used 5% of the equity on each trade. The book is good and I recommend it! It helps you learn to go against the crowd. By Kevin Kingston, author of: A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate: A True Story About the Ups and Downs From Wall Street to Real Estate Leading to Phenomenal Returns My Blog: The Real Estate Investors Blog

Content worth 5 stars, but a little high in price.

The content in this book is brilliant, unique, and fairly original. I came away with many new ideas for trading and investing, and a better understanding of possible future trends in finance. However, I think for the amount of content provided, the book is expensive. If it was 2-3 times longer and provided more detail and cases for the example, the book would be a lot better. Maybe altucher should combine Trade Like a Hedge Fund, Trade Like Warren Buffet, and Super Cash into a single volume and sell it for 35-40. Then it would be of much more value.

A book on uncommon investment ideas, not how super hedge funds profit

Instead of discussing how super hedge funds like those operated by Buffet, Soros, Tudor profit big, it is dedicated to uncommon means/stratgies (I cant agree with the author that 1) the ideas were new, 2) his adoption of the term hedge fund to simply all funds covered) including PIPE (private investment in public equities, reverse merger, IPOs - SPAC (the speciality acquisitions corp), Dutch (IPO) Auctions, closed end fund arbritrage, following Billionaires' micro-cap portfolio, activism, stocks just kicked out from indexes for "seasonal" factors, coins, paintings, NY taxi medallions and even delinquent credit card debt etc etc. Okay as a supplementary reading for ideas, but definitely not to be taken as a main course. For those who wanna read to learn more on hedge fund, "Hedgehogging" by Barton Biggs (2006) is a much suitable choice. For those who have not read the author's first book "Trade like a Hedge Fund: 20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies & Techniques to Winning Profits" yet, I strongly recommend you to read that first. Your liking of that is a strong indicator of your preference to this. In case you dislike that one, please give this a pass.

Great book!..get it!

SuperCash is a really great book. Anyone who trades is always looking for new ideas..finding more edge. SuperCash will give you many big ideas..and..many ideas that will take you out of your trading comfort zone. This book will help anyone to stop looking in the same places everyone else is looking to make money..and..will help spark many ideas outside of this book. I truly believe many of the ideas in the book are meals for a lifetime.