The Author is a below average teacher. This book is likely to establish this fact more than teaching the reader about hedge funds. Rating: 2 / 5

The MS program at the school where Keith Black teaches finance is far from good and totally pathetic. The program director at this school John Bilson and Dean Zia Hasssan individually or as a faculty group lacks the edge and seriousness to run a full fledged program. They had no time or showed any inclination to grade student test papers. The course ciuricullum is vague and they avoided teaching intricate mathematical models to students. These models have been the foundation for evolution of hedge funds or in the development of advanced portfolio managment techniques. Therefore the classroom projects used by this author is a poorly conceived idea for writing a book on such critical topic in finance. To understand hedge funds and to gain expertise it is absolutely not necessarty to even touch such a book. There are definitely better written books. Rating: 3 / 5

Its clear now that hedge funds and alternative investment strategies are the wave of the future. The billions of dollars invested to date are just the tip of the iceberg. So, you either learn the material in this book or fall behind. It’s that simple. Black’s thorough look at the burgeoning hedge fund industry provides a wealth of information on investment strategies, performance evaluation and regulation ( both U.S. and offshore ) in a way that is at the same time very informative and very readable. Regardless of your area of expertise, the breadth of this book will undoubtedly provide tremendous value.

Rating: 5 / 5

I read this book and found it to be a good complement to all the bits and pieces of the hedge fund industry floating around. You can never find a complete guide but this book puts it all together. My fiance (N.Fok) actually learned from Keith Black (now a professor at IIT, a university in Chicago that is one of the highly rated financial engineering programs). My fiance used to rave about his professor by himself. Now I rave with him. I work at a buy side shop and found this book to be very helpful in understanding strategies and the background of hedge funds. Rating: 5 / 5

Hedge funds can be arcane and complicated investments, and difficult to understand. Black is able to sift through all the complexity and lay the “parts on the table” for analysis. At a time when the interest in alternative investments is gaining momentum, readers of this book will benefit from Black’s excellent guidance on the subject. It provides in-depth background for investors who want to enter the alternatives world, and entrepreneurial investment manangers that are ready to start their own hedge funds. Rating: 5 / 5