reading some financial “thrillers”. When Genius Failed by far the best. almost done with it. The Goldman Sachs story: Money Power How goldman sachs rules the world or something was also good, and seems pretty fair despite the lurid cover & title. House of Cards by same author about Bear Sterns not as exciting due to lack of clear villain and 90 pages about the fall of the firm, then let’s now get into a history of back in 1904 Sy Lewis founded bear sterns okay that’s what you start with, nimrod. He gave away the ending in Goldman Sachs book too in the prologue but it was so fascinating I forgave him. The Quants also intriguing. The Greatest Trade Ever is next
I wouldn’t mind blowing up a hedge fund and all my arrogant computer models being wrong and throwing the world financial system into chaos, and my net worth tumbling from nine figures to seven.
the scale may be faulty.
wt (on linoleum floor, AM): 173.6
wt (on vinyl floor, AM): 173.6
wt (on vinyl floor, PM): 173.2
Rex weight (he has to ask permission but he did): 55.6
weight of my father-in-law in 2nd grade/5th grade/high school (i’ve heard all three variations of this story): 35.0
number of times I’ve heard this story: 242.0
Squat: 45×6, 135×3, 225×2, 315, 355, 385, 405, 425, 435, 445, 455; 365,370,375,380,385,390×1
Floor Press: 45(btn)x8, 135×4, 205×2, 255, 275, 295, 310, 320; 275,280,285,290,295×2, 300×1, 275×3,3,3,2
Pulls (0.5″): 135×3, 205×2, 275, 315; 255,260×2
hung from the chinup bar and did some band pulls but not too long and not too many
time: 2:21
Burn Lawson 
I have The Goldman Sachs Story on my kindle, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ll have to pickup a copy of When Genius Failed at the library. A coworker suggested The Currency Wars to me yesterday and the author was the principal negotiator of Long Term Capital Management during their bailout.
Congrats on 455!
thank you and I’m glad to have you on the blog.
currency wars seems either tin-foil hattish or awesome but I will check it out.
i was about to say that Rickards was the lawyer for LTCM, all proud of myself then i realized you wrote that but i skipped that sentence.
He comes off pretty well in that book. I.e. one of the few who is not up to something unethical or stupid, especially on the LTCM side.
I love how Taleb hammers mercilessly on Merton and Scholes (also Rubin and Bernanke)
btw finished the book and it was a good read with an update from 2010, and some opinion by the author which is IMO mostly sound rather than populist one-liners.
Congrats on the 455. I wish I had more interest in economics, seems like it would be in my best interest.
Not really. Reading about people with lots of money who do stupid and unethical shit and end up with… less money than before, but still more than I’ll earn in a lifetime, isn’t really something people like us can learn anything from.
Except Coach, who is independently wealthy and can afford to train twice a day and set all kinds of records.
BTW congrats on 455@170, looking forward to seeing how far you’ll take your squat for the meet.
ha i have interest in finance like a guy who reads sherlock holmes books and fancies himself a detective. By the way, Fatman, i notice that your comment is three paragraphs long and you didn’t shave this morning. Clearly you are a left-handed sea captain.
but you’re right there’s nothing to learn from these books other than i should have been taller, born to richer parents, and worked harder at math in college and started a hedge fund sooner. I don’t think there’s any hope for army veterans who want to be artists but are the son of civil servants.
I’m going to start a hedge fund btw. Looking for investors. I can assure you I will have a personal stake of at least 1.5k in this fund.
thanks for the kind words about the squat. i only trained 2x a day 2 or 3 times lol.
I watched Sherlock on BBC and started trying to cold read people all the time. It went about as well as you’d expect.
It’s a legit show by the way if you haven’t seen it.