Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who in Asian markets for millions Raided
Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who in Asian markets for millions Raided
Description:
Ugly Americans is the true story of John Malcolm, a Princeton graduate who halfway around the world in search of the American dream gone & pulled a deal that could be described as the biggest deal in the history of financial markets.
Without speaking a word of Japanese, with barely a penny in his pocket, Malcolm was thrown into the bizarre life of an ex-pat dealer. Surrounded by characters ripped straight from a Hollywood thriller, he quickly learned how they had into survive in a cutthroat world – known at the feet of the largest players in the markets ever.
A real-life mixture of Liar’s Poker & Wall Street, brimming with intense action, romance, underground sex, vivid locales, & exotic characters, Ugly Americans is the untold true story that will rock the financial community & redefine an era.
Ugly Americans documents the “Wild East” of the mid-1990s, where young, brilliant, & hypercompetitive traders became “hedge fund cowboys,” manipulating loopholes in an outdated & inefficient Asian financial system into rake in millions. Using a concept called arbitrage, they made their fortunes mainly on minute shifts in stocks on the Nikkei, the Japanese stock market, collapsing banks & nearly bankrupt sold the Japanese economy in the process. Other schemes were also devised, most of which were technically legal, of course, unethical. This true story centers on “John Malcolm,” who give in exchange for anonymity, Ben Mezrich all the access & the information he needed, agreed into write this book. As a recent Princeton graduate in the mid-1990s, Malcolm was an undefined job offer from an American expatriate in Japan in the investment field work. Although he had no experience, he facilitated 25 million U.S. dollars trades on his first day on the job, & there was even more exciting from there. He soon joined a small group of foreigners, all located in their twenties & mostly graduates of the Ivy League, who lived like rock stars, thriving on the stress & excitement of creating their jobs, their own versions of steroid-American half a world dream . Mezrich tells this riveting story well, the elements of this culture in his story, including the infamous & pervasive Japanese “Water Trade” or sex business, romantic intrigue, & even run-ins with the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. Although there is small real analysis of financial relationships & how they ultimately changed the rules of finance in Asia, this entertaining page turner does offer a glimpse into a world where print in small explored until now. – Shawn Carkonen
Rating: 
(of 97 votes)
List Price: $ 29.95
Price: $ 4.99
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Tags: Americans, Asian, Cowboys, League, markets, millions, Raided, story, True, Ugly
July 31st, 2010 at 1:36 am
Review by J. Meyercord for Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
Rating:
I was a fan of BDTH, but there are several significant problems with this book. I work at a hedge fund that invests in Asian markets and the discussion of “hedge funds” and Asian markets is superficial, at best. Please don’t read this book and think that you have any relavent knowledge of either of those topics. Secondly, there are little details that the author did not research very well and that just destroy his credibility. For example, Ivy League schools do not give athletic scholarships. It is one of the conditions of being in the Ivy League athletic conference, a conference that prides itself on “scholar athletes.” For this reason it would be difficult to get a “full ride” for football at Princeton. Another example, foreigners are not allowed to rent cars in Bermuda. That is why everyone rides those vespas around everywhere. I know these are minor details, but they destory the credibility of the author. When you change the details of someone’s story you have to do the research to make sure the new persona makes sense. Lucky Mezrich isn’t creating cover stories for a CIA spy, or they would surely be dead. Finally, I think the discussion of the sex trade is relevant to the story, but somewhat gratuitous and cliche.
July 31st, 2010 at 2:06 am
Review by mynameisalreadyinuse for Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
Rating:
I have mixed feelings about this book but the overwhelming one is disappointment. Underneath, there is a tremendous story that begs, and needs, to be told, but unfortunately Mr Mezrich, for whatever reason, does not tell it. Im a pop-history junkie and I work in the financial industry so I was doubly excited about this book. I was expecting a detailed, inside account of a little known slice of recent financial history, something akin to Liar’s Poker. But what this book provides is far short of that expectation. For one, the names of all the main players and pertinent details of their lives, except for the big dogs who could not be disguised like Joe Jett or Nick Leeson, are altered so you never really grow an attachment or a bond to any of the characters. “John Malcolm”, the main character, is a made up name. My first thought was that these guys were in to something so juicy that in order to protect their lives their true identities couldnt be revealed. Mezrich even says this. So Im waiting all book to find out what it was. At the end of it, I was still waiting. Sure the book gives you a peep into the wild, rock-star lives of these “hedge fund cowboys”, but thats all you get, a peep. As far as I can tell, the main characters ran a hedge fund in Japan that may or may not have been funded by the Yakuza (the Japanese mob) and because the main guy who ran the fund was so feared in Japan and southeast Asia, they were able to acquire favors and inside info which allowed them to make a killing. But you never find out why a skinny pasty white ivy-league American guy is so feared in Japan. So the book in essence is a work of fiction based on factual data and thus in no way at all has any historical worth. It’s like a movie thats “based” on actual events – its flashy and entertaining, but it has to be in order to sell. The true events are similar and there is some overlap, but thats it. So where as in Liar’s Poker, you learn about the actual guys on Wall Street in their actual firms doing the deeds that altered history, in Ugly Americans, you get small pieces that pique your attention and get you hungry but never really satisfy your appetite.Plus its such a fast and easy read, that I finished it in 2 days.Shawn Carkonen’s review for Amazon says it best “Though there is little real analysis of their financial dealings and how they ultimately changed the rules of finance in Asia, this entertaining page turner does offer a glimpse into a world little explored in print until now.” I was expecting the analysis of their dealings and its effect on the Asian financial markets, as well as the lifestyle portion. It was entertaining, and it is something that has never been in print before, but there is a lot that still could be put to print.
July 31st, 2010 at 2:31 am
Review by Brian Harnett for Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
Rating:
I work in FX trading and I loved this book, unlike the previous reviewer. I also though Mezrich did a good job at giving a cursory explaination of the hedge fund industry and trading. Is it perfect? No, but hey, there are many books written on the industry, this is a story about a person within the industry. Also, they don’t give Athletic scholarships to people at Ivies, but they do give academic scholarships to grossly underqualified individuals. It happens, maybe not that often, but it does. Also, Michael Lerch (Malcom) lives in Hawaii. So Bermuda obviously being a cover for the real location…
Overall, great book, fun read, but not overly technical.
July 31st, 2010 at 2:57 am
Review by Atherton Reader for Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
Rating:
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.
July 31st, 2010 at 3:55 am
Review by Connecticut Cowboy for Ugly Americans CD: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
Rating:
I was excited to read this book: 1) the same author as the compelling Bringing Down the House, and 2) a plot about hedge funds — a topic of personal and professional interest to me. The excitement dwindled fast.
Ben Mezrich is a very average writer. He tries too hard at times to describe a different world, only to lose all crediblity in the eyes of those actually familiar with that world. He doesn’t trust the imagination (or intelligence) of his reader, whom he constantly talks down — perhaps a Harvard-learned trait.
Mezrich needs to get over his lovefest for Ivy league schools and their students. People who attend the Ivies are smart, but so too are the students of another 50 or so US institutions. It gets sickening after a while to read his constant, self-congratulatory fawning over the Ivies. (For the record, I have met far fewer people in the hedge fund world from the Ivies than I have from schools like UVA, Michigan, and Chicago.)
The plot of Ugly Americans seems very forced. If someone had told me this story over dinner, I certainly wouldn’t have felt compelled to turn it into a book or a movie. The details don’t hold together at all, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be fascinating either to those versed or unversed with hedge fund strategies.
Overall, this book didn’t disappoint me strictly because of Mezrich’s superficial understanding or explanation of hedge fund strategies. It disappointed me because it is poorly written and weakly characterized. It disappointed me because it wasted my scarcest resource, free time. It disappointed me because I really did enjoy BDTH, but now my view of that compelling read is tarnished too.