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I have started to read Thomas Bass's "The Predictors", but I find his novelesque-lite style a bit irritating. I am wondering if there is enough of a plot to compensate for the fluff.Any opinions ?

It is a work of fiction. Dont waste time on it.- hedge Q.

The prediction company is real - my firm has visited them - but, yes the book is useless and not worth the effort. Try this link:http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/predco_refs.htm

i wanna swear after/during reading that book.If you are a finance guy, you would not enjoy that book for sure. go read my comment on amazon.com under name DoCoMo

Beg to disagree, but this book is really interesting. Don't understand why "If you are a finance guy, you would not enjoy that book for sure", but everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Anyway, Bass´s previous book is interesting as well, "The Eudamonic Pie" if I do remember. He writes in a very passionate way and describes the genesis of a major stat-arb HF from the early groundwork to the final acquisition by a Swiss investment bank. It seems they still operate quite successfully, and made Doyne Farmer and his associates a lot of money in the process.

that book is shit

The book is fine if you like novels but it doesn't have any meat for quants.The most interesting lesson of the entire book comes when the company has been trading for a little while and the results have gone from good to bad. They think they're getting bad fills so they visit the exchange to see how their orders are processed. They discover that everyone on the floor has learned that the Prediction Company submits its orders at exactly 3PM everyday. You can guess what sort of fills they got from the floor.Its ironic that the "The Predictors" didn't predict that being predictable would lead to predictable problems.

It's not a textbook but it's an entertaining read. I saw Doyne Farmer give a presentation at KCL on market microstructure a couple of years back. He still had the air of a physicist trying to figure out the markets but the way he dealt with a fairly aggressive line of questioning by a couple of market practioners suggested he had a pretty good handle on how things worked. DF and Norman Packard's aims in setting up Prediction company were to make enough money to be able to conduct research independently away from unreliable government funding. A noble aim. I just want to go scuba diving from the back of my own boat.PS: If you want a textbook, try Pairs Trading

Quote The book is fine if you like novels but it doesn't have any meat for quants. What?!?! Does this mean that quants should only read highly axiomatic, deeply mathematical litterature, instead of plain investigative journalism ? This sort of critique is meaningless. Every perspective on any given matter is valid, no matter how descriptive or quantitative it might be. Reading about how these people set out this original company is an interesting matter per se, regardless of which models they have implemented and which languages they used. The same reasoning applies to other titles such as "My Life as a Quant", "Liars´Poker", "Capital Ideas" et al, but these are all great books one should read and appreciatte. BTW: Do you known some American IBs send out a list of these books as interesting references to newjoiners? These titles are part of their recommended literature. It thus seems awkward seeing someone trashing these titles that easily...