His account of these activities is often hilarious; I am reminded strongly of Richard Feynman, who was, incidentally, a friend of his. Before this book, I wasn’t aware of what a super genius he is. He took a standard IQ test (he didn’t know the reason) to determine whether he should skip 6th grade . He enjoyed the first part of the test, then decided he had better things to do and drew a line down “true” for the last set of true/false questions.

I like that he deliberately calls out how some people you come across in life will not hesitate to put their well being ahead of yours even when they already have what may be considered a comfortable position in life. What makes people successful is being able to roll with these punches to overcome what life dishes out. Having made enough money to last him and his wife comfortably for the rest of their lives, he retired to spend time with his family, traveling, and enjoying life. And writing this autobiography, which is full of gems of wisdom about managing your money and life in general. Thorp received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1958, and worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1959 to 1961. He was a professor of mathematics from 1961 to 1965 at New Mexico State University, and then joined the University of California, Irvine where he was a professor of mathematics from 1965 to 1977 and a professor of mathematics and finance from 1977 to 1982.

The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” -Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, to Kurt Vonnegut at a billionaire’s party. If you haven’t heard of the so-called “secretary/marriage problem” in math turn to page 224. The problem is a man for all markets when to say yes to get the best candidate. Once you say no you usually don’t get another chance and you may find the remaining candidates not as good. On the other hand, if you say yes too soon you might miss the best choice.

Book Summary Of ‘A Man For All Markets’

I was surprised the author dedicated the last 1/3 or 1/4th of the book to personal finance, budgeting, and life view/work life balance. Thorp’s favorite entertainment was solving mathematical puzzles. He decided early on not to accept anyone’s opinion that something was impossible . After blackjack, he calculated a way to beat roulette, in collaboration with Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. He was, of course, barred from the Nevada casinos, and became a master of disguise as a result. The last casino game to fall to his calculations was baccarat.

Thorp concludes with Chapter 30 “Thoughts,” which I found fascinating. There are also five appendices, three on inflation and the dollar, historical returns, and the performance of his fantastically successful hedge fund, Princeton Newport Partners. Ed Thorpe is one of the great minds in the history of the trading business and one of the Top 5 trading legends I have been hoping to see a biography come out on. (Steven Cohen plz!!) In this case Thorpe wrote his own autobiography and that makes it all the better.

A Man for All Markets: Beating the Odds, from Las Vegas to Wall Street

His remarkable success—and mathematically unassailable method—caused such an uproar that the casinos altered the rules of the game to thwart him and the legions he inspired. They barred him from their premises, instituted new rules, and put his life in jeopardy. The first half of the book was an utterly fascinating autobiography recalling the early years of the author’s childhood life and how he got interested in mathematics. His curiosity led him to key discoveries in how to beat the dealer in blackjack and other games of chance, and eventually led him down the path to make key discoveries to arbitrage the markets in finance. However, that material only provided enough for half of a book so the latter half is stuffed with his observations and views on markets, hedge funds, wealth, personal finance, etc.

• The investigation, which concerned stock manipulation and fraud allegedly taking place in the firm’s Princeton office, was tied to a larger investigation focused on financier Michael Milken, who was later found guilty of several securities violations.
• The lengthy descriptions on his own mathematical skills reveal an author who is completely unaware that as good as his analytical abilities are, they are not one in a billion or possibly even one in a million varieties.
• As a very small boy I remember sitting in his lap on a humid afternoon examining the shrapnel scars on his chest and the minor mutilation of some of his fingers.
• I was surprised the author dedicated the last 1/3 or 1/4th of the book to personal finance, budgeting, and life view/work life balance.
• Nevertheless, he got the highest score the principal had ever seen in many years of educating bright students.

Over the next couple of years I read books including Gulliver’s Travels, Treasure Island, and Stanley and Livingstone in Africa. When, after an eight-month arduous and dangerous search, Stanley found his quarry, the only European known to be in Central Africa, I thrilled to his incredible understatement, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” and I discussed the splendor of the Victoria Falls on the https://forexarena.net/ Zambezi River with my father, who assured me that they far surpassed our own Niagara Falls. A autobiography by Ed Thorp, the man who has beaten not only the casino but also Wall Street. This book is recommended by Charlie Munger in the Daily Journal AGM in Feb 2017. Jack Sschwager also said the most impressive of all the people he met/featured for his Market Wizards series was Ed Thorp.

An intellectual thrill ride, replete with practical wisdom that can guide us all in uncertain financial waters, A Man for All Markets is an instant classic—a book that challenges its readers to think logically about a seemingly irrational world. An intellectual thrill ride, replete with practical wisdom that can guide us all in uncertain financial waters, A Man for All Markets is an instant classic–a book that challenges its readers to think logically about a seemingly irrational world. A child of the Great Depression, legendary mathematician Edward O. Thorp invented card counting, proving that you could do the seemingly impossible—beat the dealer at the blackjack table—and in doing so launched a gambling renaissance.

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

Thorpe dives into any number of related topics including his own tale of spotting the Madoff fraud 20 years before it came to light….noone listened to him either. And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.

He laughed good-naturedly, added the numbers again, and found I was right. To my delight he rewarded me with an ice-cream cone. After that I dropped by when I could and checked his totals. On the rare occasions when we disagreed, I was usually correct and would get another cone.

Good read

It turns out that Thorp took a different path to Wall Street where his ability to find mathematical inefficiencies led to the creation of successful hedge funds. Edward O. Thorp launched revolutions in Vegas and on Wall Street by turning math into magic, and here he weaves his own life lessons into a page-turner as hot as a deck full of aces. Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Down the House and The Accidental Billionaires. Bill Gross read Thorp’s book on blackjack, turned $200 into $10,000 and went on to start PIMCO – the $2 trillion investment firm. Thorp was the first limited partner of Citadel, now one of the world’s largest hedge funds. Princeton Newport Partners, Thorp’s first fund, compounded at 19% per year from 1969 to 1988 with zero losing quarters.

That was quite a coup especially considering that it happened fifty-some years ago. Towards the end Thorp gets a bit more specific about investment strategies (he talks about finding a subset of the S&P500 that closely tracks the S&P500 but can be more tax-efficient and lead to interesting strategies, for instance). But that’s not the point of the book, which is more about the big picture. The smoking gun is in the acknowledgements section, Thorp thanks a magazine editor for past opportunities to write, and saying “some chapters draw upon articles…” Yes, these out-of-place chapters are quite easy to recognize.

It was fun even though I didn’t make much money at it. However, I admired his approach to problem solving and I’m glad he wrote this book, which reviews his career, not only beating gambling games but also the financial markets. There is lots of good information for investors in the book and everyone who is investing for retirement or anything else should read this book or others like it. Thorp was on to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme long before his house of cards collapsed.

Cleared payment cleared payment – opens in a new window or tab. Ed Thorp beat the casino in blackjack, invented the world’s first wearable computer, and generated one of the best track records in the investment industry. The New York Times bestselling author of Dealing with China takes the reader behind closed doors to witness the creation and evolution and future of China’s state-controlled capitalism.

Thorp was a child prodigy who was fascinated by all kinds of science and driven to learn. He proved mathematically, then in the casinos themselves, that blackjack players hold an edge over the dealer and literally wrote the book Beat the Dealer in the 1960s. He moved on from academia and gambling to make boatloads of money in the stock market, hob-nob with Warren Buffet, and generally live a fascinating life.

We help investors build low-cost diversified portfolios, create comprehensive financial plans, and save money with a flat annual fee. After this, the campaign to get me to talk intensified. About the time of my third birthday, my mother and two of her friends, Charlotte and Estelle, took me along with them to Chicago’s then famous Montgomery Ward department store.

Hell, this review could very well be just a list of his achievements. I’ve come to believe very strongly that any knowledge that cannot be used in the real world is useless. Application of knowledge to solve real world problems – for individualistic gain or otherwise – satiates our desire to exist. As Munger says, we have a high moral responsibility to understand human systems and act rationally.

Unfortunately, very few people believed that Madoff was scamming them until it all went bust. Thorp also gives an understandable explanation of why the financial markets collapsed in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and tells why something like this can keep happening. Few people have as good a grasp of financial issues as he does, and for that reason alone this is a valuable book. Figure out how to win at blackjack using card counting?