Reading the book ‘Traders Guns & Money‘  by Satyajit Das. It’s an awesome account of greed and ‘anything goes’ attitude on Wall St (and financial markets around the globe).  From ultra complex to borderline illegal instruments concocted by Dealers and Investment bankers around the world to make quick killings , everything that unraveled three years after the book was written, is detailed by the author. It’s interesting, he wrote about these years before the meltdown. But so did Warren Buffet who called these derivatives the financial WMDs!

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

The most intriguing thing about convertible bonds is that everybody seems to be getting a great deal. It’s a win-win. Markets don’t work that way. Question is, who is fooling whom?

Robert Citron, treasurer of Orange County before it went bust, confident Interest rates wouldn’t rise.: ‘I am one of the largest investors in America, I know these things’

Same guy testifying during investigations, after Orange county lost 1.5B: ‘My brain was unable to audit’ !

Traders work on the theory that what is mine is mine, and what is yours is also mine.

The irony of trying to model chaos, the finding of order in complete disorder, is lost on most quants.