Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Hedge Fund Edge is an excellent book written by someone who manages millions of dollars and manages it quite well. I have seen his hedge funds performance and it is good especially in the bear market we have had the past two years (it is positive). The timing models and the philosophy behind them are excellent and very useful to every investor. As are his equity selection techniques which are very safe yet offer excellent potential returns. His explanation on why stocks are not always the best investment is invaluable and would have saved many people who have stuck with equity long-only managers who have done a miserable job of stock picking. I am an absolute return fan and recommend this book to anyone beginner to professional. Easily ranks in my top 5 books I have read on generating profits.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Hedge Fund Edge is an excellent book written by someone who manages millions of dollars and manages it quite well. I have seen his hedge funds performance and it is good especially in the bear market we have had the past two years (it is positive). The timing models and the philosophy behind them are excellent and very useful to every investor. As are his equity selection techniques which are very safe yet offer excellent potential returns. His explanation on why stocks are not always the best investment is invaluable and would have saved many people who have stuck with equity long-only managers who have done a miserable job of stock picking. I am an absolute return fan and recommend this book to anyone beginner to professional. Easily ranks in my top 5 books I have read on generating profits.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: hedge fund manager knows, then this is the book for you. His vivid descriptions and his mastery of all things from the macroeconomic to daily bar chart is clearly evident in his material and his confident prose. I have a whole new understanding of how the economy functions from his explanation of the Austrian Money Cycle Model. Better yet, he has dialed down the essence of how to make the right intermediate-term trades work well regardless of market direction. Best of all, if I want to find out what he is thinking about the markets today, I can check out his column on tradingmarkets.com. This is a must-read for the trader who wants to do well.
Rating:
Summary: If you've ever wanted to learn everything a successful...
Review: hedge fund manager knows, then this is the book for you. His vivid descriptions and his mastery of all things from the macroeconomic to daily bar chart is clearly evident in his material and his confident prose. I have a whole new understanding of how the economy functions from his explanation of the Austrian Money Cycle Model. Better yet, he has dialed down the essence of how to make the right intermediate-term trades work well regardless of market direction. Best of all, if I want to find out what he is thinking about the markets today, I can check out his column on tradingmarkets.com. This is a must-read for the trader who wants to do well.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Read
Review: I enjoyed Mark Boucher's The Hedge Fund Edge very much. I consider the time spent reading this work well spent. I recommend it to investment managers, investors, and their advisors as well. As an investment professional and author of How to Start Your Own Private Investment Partnership, I am very much aware how we must continually expand our horizons if we are to provide our friends and clients with the stellar performance we wish them to enjoy. The information contained in Mark Boucher's book helps us to do that.
Rating: 
Summary: The title of this books seems to me to be misleading
Review: I must agree with reviewer Omar Wanza. There is nothing in this book about statistical arbitrage, which is probably the most effective strategy used by hedge fund managers. Nor does it really talk much about many of the other methods used very effectively by hedge funds. While the book covers a wide variety of topics pertinent to investing, its central thesis is that knowing and understanding the liquidity cycles of individual countries is of paramount importance in developing a portfolio strategy. When he talks about the liquidity cycle, the author is bascially talking about the business cycle. Due to the rise of the global economy, however, the likelihood that different countries will continue to have differing liquidity cycles is becoming more remote. Also, because it is extremely difficult, in practice, to predict any liquidity cycle, it would seem to me that the information in this book is only of limited value for any investment strategy. The basic problem with this book is that it was written in 1999, which was not only before global investing became less profitable as a hedge fund strategy, but prior to the current bear market in equities. Based upon various demographic considerations, the author, Mark Boucher, predicted that a bear market in equities would be likely in the year 2005. Some of Boucher's assumptions regarding the relationship of liqudity cycles to various asset classes seem to me to be in need of adjustment based upon the actual economic events that have transpired in the last few years. In one of the later chapters, he recommends a number of hedge funds, but the book would have been far more valuable if, instead of recommending various hedge funds, he had actually outlined the many different effective methods used by hedge fund managers to manage their own portfolios. Although there are many potentially helpful things in this book, the title seems to me to be misleading, and I'm not sure that all of the theoretical considerations in it would necessarily pan out in the crucible of current market conditions, whereas certain hedge fund strategies, which are not even mentioned in the book, would probably be far more promising for today's environment.
Rating: 
Summary: If Soros was a prof, Boucher was one of his 'C' students
Review: Like many books written by practitioners, "The Hedge Fund Edge" provides some insight as to how one man makes his living, warts and all. By warts, I mean specious reasoning by the author. One of the warts in this book is a misunderstanding of basic macroeconomics. For example, Boucher presents capital input growth as productivity growth. The 'models' presented in the book are vapid space filler and could have been taken from an undergraduate's class presentation. All of the models could have been summarized neatly on one page rather than several dozen. Also, there are multiple typographical errors and citation errors throughout the book. The author likely used the phrase 'hedge fund' to tap into a hot topic in order to sell more books. This book is not about hedge funds, it's about global macro trading. You can learn more about global macro trading in the preface to Soros' "Alchemy of Finance" than you'd get out of this entire book.
Rating:
Summary: If Soros was a prof, Boucher was one of his 'C' students
Review: Like many books written by practitioners, "The Hedge Fund Edge" provides some insight as to how one man makes his living, warts and all. By warts, I mean specious reasoning by the author. One of the warts in this book is a misunderstanding of basic macroeconomics. For example, Boucher presents capital input growth as productivity growth. The 'models' presented in the book are vapid space filler and could have been taken from an undergraduate's class presentation. All of the models could have been summarized neatly on one page rather than several dozen. Also, there are multiple typographical errors and citation errors throughout the book. The author likely used the phrase 'hedge fund' to tap into a hot topic in order to sell more books. This book is not about hedge funds, it's about global macro trading. You can learn more about global macro trading in the preface to Soros' "Alchemy of Finance" than you'd get out of this entire book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Mark Boucher. This is a book that you definitely want to buy and take notes. I have 11 pages of notes from this book on 10 point type. Boucher covers tons of information and you certainly won't be able to digest everything in the first couple of readings. But if you have the desire to sit down and really follow what he has to say then you can really get your money's worth from this book. Boucher goes into a lot of detail on the bond and equity market in the first part of the book and how they are related. Tells you when to start to buy real assets like real estate, gold, silver, etc... He covers tons of market timing models from bond prices and yields and government statistical releases. He also tells you how the FED distorts the economy and signs to watch how the markets react to the distortion. He goes into a very good explanation about the Austrian Liquidity Cycle and how capital gain taxes are killing the USA. He also explains why privatizing social security is such a good idea but overall tells why government should be far less intrusive than it currently is now. Boucher then goes into his equity fuel criteria. It is rigorous process that he goes through to pick stocks. It is similar to CANSLIM but he adds several of his own screens to it including the 5/21 runaway characteristics which I have found to be extremely helpful. He covers a lot more topics from when to buy gold, money management, how and why you should keep a journal etc....all in one book and it isn't just a shallow explanation either they are in depth. Overall a very good book. 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: the author does a great job of articulating exactly what he looks at when making investment decisions. I am an investment professional with ten years of terrific returns, but still learned a great deal from this book. the sections on the liquidity cycle provided a great refresher/overview of this concept. I probably read between 5 and 10 investment books a year, and this is definitely one of the best I've read in a long time.
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