昨晚快睡觉的时候，在微博上看到了关于巴顿·比格斯的新闻，隐约记得，看过他的一本书。今天早上出门的时候，从书房里头找到了他为数不多的著作——《对冲基金风云录》。看了看扉页上的日期，那是我2009年4月份读过的一本书，已经不记得是谁推荐的，只记得当时读了一半就没有继续下去。重新翻开那本已经有些发黄的书，心里有些感慨，三年前的我整天忙碌琐事，对待大师的作品太过敷衍。在去单位的路上，细细读了前面的几个章节，才体味到巴顿·比格斯确实不一样。
我想起了上周在北京的时候，跟一朋友说，但凡看投资类的书籍，一定不要读国内作者写的，特别是那种实战的投资书，最好是读国外大师的作品。个中缘由，大抵是因为这是我的经验教训，以前，买过很多投资的书，陆陆续续看了不少，但后来又接着看了几本国外大家的作品之后，发现国内外投资领域天上地下。国内要出一本书似乎很容易，不少带有“主编”、“编著”字样的书籍大行其道，但国外的经典至少都是著作，而不是到处摘抄整合，比如，大部头的《摩根财团》，文中考证的几十页的资料目录看着就吓人，可想而知作者付出了多少心血才写就一本书。而整体上，出版投资类书籍的国外多半都具有丰富的实战经验，并不是理论家。
以巴顿·比格斯的《对冲基金风云录》为例，他在华尔街对冲基金领域混迹40多年，亲身经历了群内的很多事情，当他从一个实战者的角度来记录这个隐秘圈层的生态时，所获得的是第一手的资料，而不是道听途说:
Source:douban
巴顿•比格斯，在摩根士丹利工作了30年，曾任该公司的首席战略官。在此期间，他创立了摩根士丹利的研究部，并使之成为世界上最优秀的投行研究部门。他还曾一手创办公司的投资管理业务部，并担任其主席达30年之久。到20世纪90年代中期，摩根士丹利投资管理部每年赢得的新客户超过任何竞争对手。
比格斯多次被《机构投资者》杂志评选为“美国第一投资策略师”；1996年到2003年，他一直在全球投资策略师评比中名列前茅。2003年6月，比格斯离开摩根士丹利，与两位同事共同发起了Traxis合伙基金，那是2003年规模最大的新发对冲基金。如今，Traxis管理的资金超过10亿美元。
下文是巴顿·比格斯的伙伴、朋友Martin T. Sosnoff发表在福布斯网站上的悼念文章：
Remembering My Old Buddy, Barton Biggs
(Written By Martin T. Sosnoff)
When my old, old friend Jerry Goodman (a.k.a. Adam Smith) called me with the news that Barton Biggs had died quite suddenly, I flashed back in time to the good old days when Wall Street was a backwater community of relics left over from 1929.
I’m probably the only guy who remembers that Barton was a tow-head good looker, fresh out of Yale and the Marines with two ash blonde babies pictured on his desk. Barton and I were half the institutional research department at E. F. Hutton. He worked directly for Sylvan Coleman, chairman of the board and a very tough and demanding cookie.
Our careers paralleled each other for decades. We both went on to run hedge funds in the mid-1960s when nobody was sure just exactly what a hedge fund did to make money. In 1973, Barton joined Morgan Stanley as a partner.
Both Barton and I loved to write. He penned three books and me a couple of Street reminiscences. Jerry Goodman was right in the middle, having published “The Money Game,” which sold millions of copies and made him famous as Adam Smith.
My greatest disappointment (and maybe Barton’s) was I couldn’t make a living writing. Barton and I had to buy a stock for a buck and sell it for two bucks and take a 20 percent profit taxed at capital gains rates. Even Obama hasn’t tackled this tax dodge, as yet.
Barton was a great athlete and outdoorsman. I liked to play tennis doubles with Barton as my partner, not facing me on the other side of the net. I had to turn him down when he pleaded with me to climb Kilimanjaro. There are some things you never want to do more than once.
Taking lunch with Barton was always an intellectual adventure. When it came to stocks, Barton was the most candid operator I ever encountered.He never talked his own book without giving you all the prospective negatives, as well.
If Barton declaimed on a subject or person, you knew it came from the heart. Our politics diverged dramatically in the 1980s and thereafter, but so what? I did humor Barton and attend a lunch given for Lew Lehrman, the New York gubernatorial candidate, in 1982. Lew was held up by red suspenders and the opening words out of his mouth were “The first thing we need to do is build more prisons…”
I loved Barton for his enquiring brain, his fearless writings and his great capacity for friendship, camaraderie and intellectual sharing.
As a money manager Barton was a brave operator who was wedded to the belief that intellectual capacity could win the battle for investment survival. In this, Barton and I are Siamese twins, with some hits, some misses.
I mourn his passing: a great mind matched with physicality and grace.
【Martin T. Sosnoff is chairman and founder of Atalanta Sosnoff Capital, LLC, an investment management company with $6 billion in assets under management. Sosnoff has published two books about his experiences on Wall Street, Humble on Wall Street and Silent Investor, Silent Loser. He was a columnist for many years at Forbes Magazine and for three years at The New York Post.】
