And the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street

This book is extremely well written and pulls together a lot of information from various sources. It also has a number of proprietary insights that made it a great read even for someone like me that followed these events very closely as they unfolded. Ms. Kolhatkar is a talented writer and she set the bar high with this one. I look forward to her next book.

This book is important to anyone interested in the evolution of historical processes. It seems to mark the failure of liberal democracies as they transform into despotic plutocracies: the thesis of middle class confronted by the antithesis of corporate wealth seeking a synthesis of ???

Eye-opening as to how the ins and outs of insider trading works at the highest level. In the book, Steve Cohen's SAC Capital is looked at from the inside and you get a front row seat to how it unravels fortunes worth billions of dollars.

My husband is reading this on my kindle which we both love since it adjusts the type larger for aging eyes. It makes it so much easier to read. I have an older one that isn’t back lit as I have had eye surgery and light bothers my eyes. He loves it as it allows him to lie in bed and read with ease. He says the book is excellent. If you are older and don’t have a Kindle.......it is a good investment.....Great for traveling and who needs more books to dust.???....Cheaper too.....than the hardbacks.... When we go on vacation we can take our reading with us in one small unit and save the room for bringing our granddaughter something fun.

The book was a fast read and felt more like a fiction novel. It was written from the investigation point of view. If you are interested in learning more about how the SAC case was built, this is a great read.

Great action-packed and fascinating read. Pretty sure the 1-star review is from a Steve Cohen minion. If you really want to get a sense of the corrupt and morally depraved nature of this industry, this is a must-read book. I am surprised Cohen is not behind bars - he should certainly be prevented from taking on any directorships or having his name associated with any type of philanthropy as this guy is a villain and should not be associated with any positive causes in society but should be used as an example of a morally corrupt loser despite how much money he stole. I also found it interesting how Mortoma (his changed name) was expelled from Harvard Law School before making his way to SAC. It is too bad he had Steve Cohen pay his lawyers to represent him as he would be a free man and Cohen would be in jail. Mortoma is a prime example of someone whose character flaw finally catches up to him.

This book has some very compelling parts, but I did not care for the organization. Lots of back and forth in time. Also there was more editing required. Several times characters were introduced as if we already had met them when we hadn't. Also, some of the most crucial portions of the chronology were rushed through needlessly quickly. Some glaring errors....e.g., in telling the story the trader who was thrown out of Harvard Law School the author says that he would have been in the middle of his second year at a date at which he would have been in the middle of his third year. I found these errors and glitches distracting.

Great action-packed and fascinating read. Pretty sure the 1-star review is from a Steve Cohen minion. If you really want to get a sense of the corrupt and morally depraved nature of this industry, this is a must-read book. I am surprised Cohen is not behind bars - he should certainly be prevented from taking on any directorships or having his name associated with any type of philanthropy as this guy is a villain and should not be associated with any positive causes in society but should be used as an example of a morally corrupt loser despite how much money he stole. I also found it interesting how Mortoma (his changed name) was expelled from Harvard Law School before making his way to SAC. It is too bad he had Steve Cohen pay his lawyers to represent him as he would be a free man and Cohen would be in jail. Mortoma is a prime example of someone whose character flaw finally catches up to him.

This book has some very compelling parts, but I did not care for the organization. Lots of back and forth in time. Also there was more editing required. Several times characters were introduced as if we already had met them when we hadn't. Also, some of the most crucial portions of the chronology were rushed through needlessly quickly. Some glaring errors....e.g., in telling the story the trader who was thrown out of Harvard Law School the author says that he would have been in the middle of his second year at a date at which he would have been in the middle of his third year. I found these errors and glitches distracting.

Very well written and researched book. Rather frightening the amount of financial crime and all the winkin blinking and noddin that surrounds it. What's new? Reads like a thriller and will likely give the reader agida.

A point of order. Charles Swatch is not an art collector but he is rather a dealer. Further he uses the publicly funded Brooklyn Museum of Art to showcase he worthless ugly crud.. Kind like insider info the rot never stops spreading.

If you are curious about how hedge funds work, this is a great inside look at one of the great (and most notorious) hedge funds of all time. And not all hedge funds tend to move so closely to the line demarcating inside information.

I found this book on the one hand gripping, but in the end disappointing. The legal story of catching the little fish first was interesting as such, but feels pretty flat when the big fellow gets away. Details about individual defendants' lives and about the lawyers involved, while interesting enough as you read along, turn out to be too thin to justify the time put into finishing the book.

If the reader followed the subject matter in the press, then this book is a general summarized review of those events.

For those readers familiar with the movies Godfather I & II, whether they read this book or followed the press, or not, the stories are the same.

The investing public should read this book!If a firm consistently makes more than other similar firms---run! It has the Black Edge!Sheelah Kolhatkar takes the reader on a magic carpet ride where trading on insider information is rewarded and hard honest work is the ticket for the exit.I expected a technical,tedious book -but found a fast reading book that I swore was fiction(until I remembered it was the truth).I bought more books and have sent them to my investing friends....some of us brag about outsized results......after reading this book, we may be more careful------

While interesting, I found the author's bias and preconcieved notions comes through causing the informed reader to call to mind information left out and the uninformed reader to wonder if this is the whole story. He baseline belief that sustained performance is a sign of illegal activity comes through many times, his description of the night he met Cohen is particularly telling of his distain for those he writes about.

If there is such a thing as Black Edge or Insider's Information among authors and writers then Sheelah Kohlatkar ought to be held liable for dealing in it! This book is alarmingly close to a thoroughly researched investigative journalism piece written by Patrick Radden Keefe in the New Yorker, called "The Emperor of Edge". Interestingly, Ms. Kohlatkar is currently employed by The New Yorker which really puts the content of this book in a very questionable light. Some of the words are lifted directly from that article!

If you were not caught up in the media storm surrounding this case when it happened, then this book offers a good insight into that and the players who were responsible for pulling off the largest trade based on insider information. It also chronologically presents the facts and makes a case for the systemic issues that cause such things. Stevie Cohen is clearly a criminal who should be put behind bars for the lives he's wrecked over the years for amassing his own wealth. However all of this can be found in the public domain thru other articles, investigative essays and documentaries whch this book appears to generously borrow from!

Despite all that, I would have ranked this book a higher rating had it provided something new, even first hand accounts from anyone closely associated with the case. But that is not to be found here and the outcome is a book that was compiled together by google searching other articles by other writers (and apparently even from within the walls of the author's employer) to present what looks like a neatly compiled piece of writing. I expected a lot more than that from someone who's considered a serious journalist!

Government good, citizens bad is a fair summary of the contents of this not particularly well written book. Author ignores innocent until proven guilty and should concentrate on what the law is, not what it is wished to be.

Ms. Kolhatkar knows how to write a riveting tale, and she has chosen a tale that practically tells (and rivets) itself -- the saga of SAC Capital, the hedge fund run by Steven Cohen, and how the Justice Department and the SEC tried and failed to "get" him on insider trading charges. This book has received some criticisms, including that it basically doesn't do more than amalgamate and rehash the story that has been told elsewhere; the estimable Andrew Ross Sorkin also criticized it on the grounds that without access to Cohen himself (which the author tried and failed to obtain), it's a half-told tale.

I find these criticisms a tad unfair, in that they can be leveled against much historical writing, particularly where the players are no longer alive to be accessed. However, that doesn't mean they are entirely invalid; hence the four- (rather than five-) star rating.

That said, it's still a great read, and if like me you are interested in white collar crimes, it's an informative one as well in terms of the way the SEC and DOJ coordinate (or not) with each other and the way hedge funds and "expert networks" worked and probably still work.

I do have one specific editorial quibble with the book. Very early on, in describing the rise of hedge funds, the author cites the rise of pensions as a major factor. Pensions have been around for a very long time -- far longer than hedge funds -- so I stumbled over this phrase. I have to assume that what she meant was the rise of mega-pension funds, such as those of state employees and labor unions. However, this seems to me a glaring error that an editor should have caught.

Black edge is an attempt to understand why Steven Cohe, a man Wall Street itself regards as a cheater and insider trader, was never charged with a crime. The inquiry spans decades, and the author's strength is in distinguishing one character from another; their backgrounds and world views are textured, nuanced, and intriguing. She also does an admirable job of putting insider trading in the context of the crimes that prompted the greater financial crisis, which is to say, she shows they have almost zero relationship and served only as a proxy for getting back at Wall Street when the government proved too timid or unable to make cases against senior individuals actually responsible for the downturn. Insider trading was just a sideshow.

What the book lacks most is any evidence-based account of why Cohen was never charged. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. The author attributes the failure to charge Cohen to US Attorneys afraid to look bad by losing a high profile case. But she never actually supports the contention with evidence. Her indictment appears to be based on speculation and the fact that the government lawyers involved went on to find lucrative gigs defending Wall Street insiders.

The book also lacks editing. It is repetitive and seems to mistrust its readers' ability to retain a concept or association from one chapter to the next. It is also sensationalistic when treating the salaries and other sums hedge fund folk enjoy. That millions are involved is hardly a revelation and certainly no evidence of wrong doing.

That said, the author knows how to make a narrative work. The structure is textbook. Each chapter has its own cliffhanger. The villain is clear from the get go and it is indeed maddening he escaped prosecution. Wall Street ought to be embarrassed to claim Cohen as its own.

I had two days before this book was due back at my library so I thought I would just skim it to determine if I should reserve it again. But I started reading and I couldn't stop! If you've always wondered why the SEC is so ineffective, why no financial thieves of the mid-aughts went to prison, why no one has been able to tame Wall Street, why investment shenanigans continue despite ample proof that the average investor is practically guaranteed to lose, this is the book to read. No one makes BIG money in hedge funds without some degree of insider information to which most investors have no access. That seems obvious, doesn't it? But try to define insider information for a legal indictment of those at the top, who receives it, who provides it, and what it's used for, and obscurity and obfuscation are equally as obvious. Just Google Steve Cohen and you'll know Wall Street has the upper hand -- always -- just like the House in your favorite gambling casino.

The best thing about Black Edge is that it's compulsively readable and understandable, even if you have no financial knowledge beyond the amount of money in your checking account before you pay your monthly bills. The money that changes hands and drives the fortunes of the super-rich (think Donald Trump and most of his cabinet) permeates and impacts our entire country, international trade, wars, poverty rates, education, jobs, the medical/pharmaceutical industry, to name just a few aspects of our lives. Reading this book will give you the knowledge you need to fully comprehend why the average American is so powerless against the top one percent.

This is that rare nonfiction book I was unable to put down. The last time that happened was with Black Mass, and before that was another book on Wall Street, The Billionaire's Apprentice. Sheelah Kolhatkar has that rare gift of unfurling a plot while introducing and developing a huge cast of characters. She never once doubts our intelligence, or confuses us. She knows just how much to trust us when it comes to legalese, financial transactions, and the inner workings of a hedge fund. I liked this book start to finish, and to prove how harrowing this book was, I couldn't get through Red Sparrow, and that inspired a movie with top talent.

Ms. Kolhatkar is a talented journalist and gifted writer. She takes a complex, multidimensional storyline and makes it easy to digest, if not hard to put down. This book is not about the modern hedge fund industry at large, however. This book is about SAC Capital and its founder and namesake, Steve A. Cohen: why the DOJ and the SEC wanted him, how they pursued him and those around him, and how he slipped away. It is a fascinating story of wealth, power, influence, government bureaucracy, and how information moves in today's edge economy. For those hedge funds not focused on speed and high frequency, the only way to beat the market is to have better information. Having such information without breaking the law can be difficult to do, as this book shows. This timely narrative is well written and engaging. Highly recommended.

This was a well-written book about some of the evils of insider trading on Wall Street. I found it very engaging.

SPOILER ALERT:
I found the ending disappointing, but that was no fault of the author's, merely a reflection of the truth of how impossible it is to bring some of these criminals to justice, and how the system is designed to keep it that way.

Readers of this excellent book are treated to a deep-dive inside the story of the rise and fall of American hedge fund SAC Capital – the largest insider trader investigation so far.

For those who have not followed this story, it could easily read like a hard-to-believe Hollywood movie; it is just so broad, so pervasive and so jaw-dropingly amazing. The author has done a great job in distilling a complex story into a (relatively short) engaging, focussed, gripping read that can act as both reference book and novel alike.

It is an ideal travel companion that will consume many hours of enjoyable reading, even if one doesn’t wish to glamorise its happenings. This company was by no means the only offender in what activities were undertaken, even if it was the most successful and brazen. Its “luck” ran out and it paid the price. No doubt other unpleasant activities exist in Wall Street, if stones are lifted.

An excellent read, even if you don’t usually consume such books. You may already have your views about investment and banking companies, yet prepare for this to be possibly smashed into smithereens.

This is that rare nonfiction book I was unable to put down. The last time that happened was with Black Mass, and before that was another book on Wall Street, The Billionaire's Apprentice. Sheelah Kolhatkar has that rare gift of unfurling a plot while introducing and developing a huge cast of characters. She never once doubts our intelligence, or confuses us. She knows just how much to trust us when it comes to legalese, financial transactions, and the inner workings of a hedge fund. I liked this book start to finish, and to prove how harrowing this book was, I couldn't get through Red Sparrow, and that inspired a movie with top talent.

Ms. Kolhatkar is a talented journalist and gifted writer. She takes a complex, multidimensional storyline and makes it easy to digest, if not hard to put down. This book is not about the modern hedge fund industry at large, however. This book is about SAC Capital and its founder and namesake, Steve A. Cohen: why the DOJ and the SEC wanted him, how they pursued him and those around him, and how he slipped away. It is a fascinating story of wealth, power, influence, government bureaucracy, and how information moves in today's edge economy. For those hedge funds not focused on speed and high frequency, the only way to beat the market is to have better information. Having such information without breaking the law can be difficult to do, as this book shows. This timely narrative is well written and engaging. Highly recommended.

Readers of this excellent book are treated to a deep-dive inside the story of the rise and fall of American hedge fund SAC Capital – the largest insider trader investigation so far.

For those who have not followed this story, it could easily read like a hard-to-believe Hollywood movie; it is just so broad, so pervasive and so jaw-dropingly amazing. The author has done a great job in distilling a complex story into a (relatively short) engaging, focussed, gripping read that can act as both reference book and novel alike.

It is an ideal travel companion that will consume many hours of enjoyable reading, even if one doesn’t wish to glamorise its happenings. This company was by no means the only offender in what activities were undertaken, even if it was the most successful and brazen. Its “luck” ran out and it paid the price. No doubt other unpleasant activities exist in Wall Street, if stones are lifted.

An excellent read, even if you don’t usually consume such books. You may already have your views about investment and banking companies, yet prepare for this to be possibly smashed into smithereens.

A sad and tedious (but revealing) look into how the angry, biased, and uninformed look at financial criminality. Surprising only in its lack of self awareness, otherwise by the book. Beyond the unconvincing take, the story simply lacks exciting details, as if the author was told "no comment" ad infinitum and finally said, "to hell with it, I tried and effort counts, I'm writing this thing." No awareness of what really happens at hedge funds, despite three years of research. For honest readers, be sure to complement this read with other research before drawing conclusions.

Well written and with great sources. Captures the spirit of the hedge fund world, and how it's evolved from the 1980's until now (other than skipping over the quant revolution, which even Cohen is heavily investing into). A bit pessimistic and anti-Wall Street during the later parts of the book, but the author does a good job staying balanced despite her clear disdain for the primary subject. Definite not a Stevie Cohen hagiography. Highly recommended.

Following the advice of my friend Josephine, I tried “reading” a book by “listening” in Audible. The first book is Black Edge. I finished the 350-pages book in less than two weeks…I listened when I jogged in the evening, drove to a meeting in Shenzhen, picked kids up when they had a late night, and when I got exhausted but didn’t feel wanting to sleep. Not realised that I had subscribed to a monthly plan (!), I have since, happily and reluctantly, ordered a few.

Black Edge, by journalist Sheelah Kolhatkar, is a disturbing “read”, however. The story was about the alleged (some convicted) insiders’ stock dealings (hence the name of the book) by people inside the SAC Capital, one of the most powerful hedge funds in the last two decades.

Starting out as a small subsector of asset management, hedge funds’ rise to prominence in the mid-2000s was largely unnoticed or misunderstood by the mainstream investment community, regulators and academic circles. Their quick rise and dominance of capital markets before AND after the global financial tsunami in 2008-09 was phenomenal.

As practitioners, we at the time felt that the encroachments of hedge funds came in bits and pieces. There was nothing too much to worry about them. At most, they would just be a fad. If not, well, it is capitalism at its best, survival of the fitness.

This book, based on over 200 open and covert interviews, screening of voluminous court proceedings and official documents, however, tells a different story.

It is one that shows how a group of fast thinking but high power individuals turned the profession of investments into a business of illegal infiltration, tapping and spying, the kinds that were comparable to the mafias.

So bad was this crop of profiteers that one of the federal investigators was quoted as saying, with a long and bitter sigh, that “while members of mafia regularly break laws, they don’t betray their unspoken code of loyalty to each other easily. However, this group of white-collar moneymen, when under pressure, turned their back to each other without hesitation.”

I finished “reading” the book in less than two weeks, but I get a lasting feeling that the story of the lurking or poaching of return from otherwise legitimate, hardworking “traditional” investors may continue for some time.

This book reads like a thriller and you can't wait to see what happens next. The author is absolutely phenomenal and the narrator is just as talented so it's a great book and listen all the way around. I've listened to more than 100 books and this is in the "Top 10" for sure. I will read or listen to any book Sheelah writes going forward.

Well researched for sure. How much did the frustrated regulators help? Anyone who likes this type of story might also easily enjoy "Not My Grandfather's Wall Street" -- portions of which revolve around front-running tactics inside a thinly-disguised Wall Street firm that may have had a hand in putting CTA manager John Henry & Co. out of business. Shark-like tactics certainly seem to abound on Wall Street.

This was a well-written book about some of the evils of insider trading on Wall Street. I found it very engaging.

SPOILER ALERT:
I found the ending disappointing, but that was no fault of the author's, merely a reflection of the truth of how impossible it is to bring some of these criminals to justice, and how the system is designed to keep it that way.

SAC Capital was once one of the most powerful hedge funds on Wall Street. Over the 20 years he'd run SAC, Steven Cohen had averaged 30% returns, and his fees, at up to 50% of profits, were among the highest in the business. He was a short-term speculator with seven monitors on his desk who placed high-volume bets on small movements in stock prices. Miraculously, Cohen was on the right side of almost every transaction - seemingly impossible. The book makes a strong case that Cohen leaned hard on employees to get vital information - usually private, proprietary information. However, Cohen avoided explicitly demanding inside information - instead, he'd ask employees for a 'conviction rating,' from one to ten - a nine was invariably associated with inside information.

After a nearly ten-year battle against government investigators who had wiretaps, e-mails, and IM logs, Cohen himself never faced criminal charges - the most the SEC could do was order that it be shut down in 2013 and fine it $1.8 billion - chump change compared to the almost $10 billion Cohen was left with. During the government investigation, Cohen answered 'I don't recall' 65 times. In 2014 Cohen made $2.5 billion more from trading his personal fortune.

SAC Capital, Stamford Conn., took in $789 million in fees and returns during the first 10 months of 2012, making it more profitable than any other hedge fund. It was also at the center of a six-year investigation into illegal trading activity on Wall Street. The investigation began by focusing on a 20-minute phone call 7/20/2008 during which a young portfolio manager convinced Cohen to drop a $700 million long position in drug companies Elan and Wyeth based on alleged advanced information about the development of an Alzheimer's drug. The analyst (Mathew Martoma) also persuaded Cohen to short both stocks hundreds of millions - a billion-dollar trading swing that brought enormous profits and avoided losses.

Martoma was charged November of 2012 with securities fraud for trading Elan and Wyeth in advance of news about the Alzheimer's drug. The government's evidence includes the testimony of a scientist who says he leaked drug trial data.

At the time, Martoma was the 8th person linked to allegations of insider trading while at SAC. The FBI had been led to Martoma by another hedge fund manager it was trying to gain cooperation from in the insider-trading investigation of Galleon Group. That individual told investigators how hedge fund traders used expert networks to connect them with employees at companies who could provide insight about their industries for fees of as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars. Before the 1990s Enron scandal, traders often found their edge by nagging company executives for information crumbs, while others demanded that brokerage firms with whom they did business give them a heads-up before downgrading a security. The SEC Fair Disclosure rules in 2000 outlawed this approach.

The SEC issued 140 subpoenas and amassed 2 million pages of documents as it build its case involving SAC Capital. The requested subpoenas, phone records, and trading data first were directed at third parties rather than alerting SAC. The SEC case was stalled awhile when one of its sources was outed by the WSJ.

Highly engaging and accessibly written account of the FBI's and SEC's multi-year attempt at bringing down one of the hedge fund industry's pioneering successes. With a 20-year annual average return of 20%, Steven Cohen's SAC fund personified the rise of hedge funds - short term, exceedingly profit focused asset management vehicles.

Black Edge reads like a crime novel, and Ms. Kolhatkar has captured the important pieces of this colossal crime story magnificently. Readily accessible to lay people.

This is an excellent read. I could not put it down. The author has meticulously researched the story, and it includes many details which bring you inside the SEC and reveal the inner workings of SAC Capital. There's an excellent Fresh Air interview that aired on Feb 7th. She explains the common practice of "black edge" and the difficulty for the FBI and SEC to prove wrongdoing. The book is timely as it illuminates the checks and balances (or lack of) on the financial industry and shows there's still lots of work to be done. Five stars.
ps to the reviewer who gave 1 star - it's obvious this person is one of Steve Cohen's minions if not Steve himself

What a fantastic book! It was a great explanation as to how this man accumulated such a vast fortune. Whether or not he was an indictable criminal, he was certainly very smart and cabable of outclassing his contemporaries.
Clearly, the laws of this nation are not able to contain this morally dubious behavior. Congress and the Trump administration would also seem to be in no hurry to try. Men like Steve Cohen, who will reopen his business next year, will be well situated to make many, many more billions very shortly.

I thought this is a great book. The story covered is fascinating, and I found this book very informative, albeit not in an encouraging way. The book is very well-written, and I found it to be a page-turner due to its pace and how exciting the story is. Congrats to the author for her accomplished reporting and analysis.

It reads like a rehashing of court proceedings and newspaper reports. The author's view is partial. For some people whose legal charges were later dropped, the author told their stories in a way as if they were proven guilty.

US Attorney Preet Bharara was a member of the Class of 1990 at Harvard, not the Class of 1986. This is simple and easy to check. The characterization that Preet had "alcohol-fueled political debates" in college is the author's fantasy. I knew him through all four years of undergraduate life and cannot remember him drinking alcohol. He was smart and funny without touching a drop. This inaccurate characterization ruined the believability of the narrative. Once I started to question the one fact, I wondered how more "facts" were also just wild guesses about the players in the hedge fund drama.

This book was terrible start to finish. The author basically put together all of the already printed articles on this topic from the past years of which many of them were flawed. This is all old news. Her description of the events that transpired has many inaccuracies and the writing is very poor. I would not waste your money on this!

Fabulous description of a hedge fund that does anything to get an advantage. Many employees pay the price but the top man, once again walks away with his billions and his art collection. SAC Capital stands for Stephen A Cohen.

Well written and with great sources. Captures the spirit of the hedge fund world, and how it's evolved from the 1980's until now (other than skipping over the quant revolution, which even Cohen is heavily investing into). A bit pessimistic and anti-Wall Street during the later parts of the book, but the author does a good job staying balanced despite her clear disdain for the primary subject. Definite not a Stevie Cohen hagiography. Highly recommended.