Sunday 7 July 2013

The Fear Index - Robert Harris

Take an intelligent man who is well versed in possibilities and probabilities but less so in social behaviour and
http://www.hive.co.uk/book/the-fear-index/13414945/
add to one man who is gregarious, persuasive and avaricious and you have the formula for a successful investment company. Especially when the geek invents a programme that can predict the market's 'feelings'.
By reading data from various websites and combining it with the knowledge already stored the programme gets more and more efficient.
It gets slightly worrying when it predicts the downturn of an air company just before an air crash.
Fascinating in it's easy read of the stock market the book doesn't quite reach the standards of Enigma as the characters surrounding the idea are not as strong.
At the end you're still left wondering why the geek's wife married him.
There's no strong relationship between the three main characters.
Overall it brings the world of hedge funds to an easy level, the idea of the programme is great but the book as a whole doesn't quite work for me.

Publisher - Hutchinson

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