When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management

by Roger Lowenstein

When prices begin to gyrate, it is as if little eddies and currents begin to bubble in a formerly placid river. This security is dragged with the current, that one is washed upstream. Two bonds that once journeyed happily in tow are now wrenched apart, and once predictable spreads are jolted out of sync. Suddenly, investors feel cast adrift. Those who are weak or insecure may panic or at any rate sell. If enough do so, a dangerous undertow may distort the entire market. For the few who have hung on to their capital and their wits, this is when opportunity beckons.

Long-Term preferred to reap a sure nickel than to gamble on making an uncertain dollar, because it could leverage its tiny margins like a high-volume grocer, sucking up nickel after nickel and multiplying the process thousands of times.