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- Description
- Product Details
- About the Author
- Read an Excerpt
- Table of Contents
Description
A real-life underdog tale of one man turning the tables on the casinos and Wall Street without selling his soul to the devil
All around the world, the words "Wall Street" conjure up a powerful image. For some, it is the center of America's capitalist system and the engine of its economic growth. For others, it is the home of rapacious bankers and reckless traders whose greed would lead to a global financial crisis. For an Indian-born blackjack player, Wall Street represented something else entirely -- a chance for him to play in the largest casino in the world.
Kamal Gupta's improbable journey, from a wide-eyed Indian immigrant to an ultimate insider in the rarefied world of investment banks and hedge funds, is a uniquely American story. Nowhere else would it have been possible for a scrawny computer scientist to enter the world of high finance solely on the basis of his gambling abilities. After spending seven years creating an investment methodology, Gupta went on an incredible run, generating an unprecedented 103 consecutive months of positive returns while managing money at large hedge funds. His success did not go unnoticed, and he found himself under constant pressure to take bigger risks to make even more money. He refused and always played it right, knowing that there was such a thing as "enough" money, something very few, if any, of his Wall Street peers understood.
Much like Maria Konnikova's bestseller, The Biggest Bluff, Play It Right isn't so much about money as it is about the human condition and beating the odds, whether at a casino, on Wall Street, or in life itself.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781770416604
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: ECW Press
Publication Date: 05-10-2022
Pages: 240
Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
About the Author
Kamal Gupta earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi — entering the elite institution after only completing eleventh grade — and received a master’s in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in just 11 months. Bored in the tech world, he turned himself into a professional blackjack player. An unexpected turn of events brought him to Wall Street, where for over two decades he beat the odds in every imaginable way. Gupta lives in the greater New York City area with his family.
Read an Excerpt
“Open it,” he said. Inside was a one-page letter addressed to me. It began, “We are pleased to offer you a position as a Junior Trader at Lehman Brothers …” and ended with Michael Gelband’s signature. I sat there in disbelief, clutching the letter, reading that line over and over again. Against the advice of my family and friends, I had given up on a career in computers and devoted two years of my life to blackjack. It had been a struggle, but I had beaten the casinos and grown my bankroll to thirty-two times its original size. And now, I had thrown a Hail Mary to the biggest casino of them all, Wall Street, and scored a job offer on the spot. I had made the journey from San Francisco to New York for this interview on a whim, figuring that I was wasting my frequent-flyer ticket on a foolish pursuit. Lehman had insisted that I pay for my own flights because you don’t seem serious about this business, an obvious fact that was hard for me to argue against. After an initial reluctance, I had decided to take a chance and used my airline miles for the trip. The gamble had paid off more handsomely than I could ever have imagined. Now that I had an actual job offer, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Michael expected a yes right there and then. However, sitting in that office, I wasn’t prepared to uproot myself from a city that I adored and relocate to one that terrified me. I cleared my throat and said, “I need to think about it. I’ll let you know in two weeks.” Michael looked flummoxed, the smile evaporating, “Two weeks? Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what we’re offering you? Look around, half the people on this trading floor get paid more than most CEOs. Do you know how hard it is to get your foot in this door? There is a long line of Ivy League graduates standing outside that would kill for this opportunity.” I didn’t know and I almost didn’t believe any of it. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to land a Wall Street job so quickly. An initial rush of euphoria was quickly followed by a growing sense of dread. What had I gotten myself into? I refused to budge and insisted that I needed time to make such a big decision. In the end, Michael relented and gave me the two weeks that I had asked for. The next day, I flew back to San Francisco to ponder the biggest gamble of my life. Without knowing the first thing about finance, was I willing to take a chance on Wall Street?Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Eighteen Seconds 1 Chapter 2 A Gambler at Heart 5 Chapter 3 Life of a Blackjack Player 13 Chapter 4 Everyone Wants to Play Blackjack 23 Chapter 5 "You should work on Wall Street." 30 Chapter 6 From Haight Street to Wall Street 34 Chapter 7 The Bank Cafe 40 Chapter 8 Angel Food Cake 45 Chapter 9 A Kitchen-Sink Deal 50 Chapter 10 "Hey, Goopta! Wanna give me a blow j*b?" 54 Chapter 11 A Broken Branch 59 Chapter 12 IIT Delhi 69 Chapter 13 The 1984 Riots 75 Chapter 14 A Bee in the Oven 82 Chapter 15 Broken Heart, Broken Hand 88 Chapter 16 Fire in the Sky 94 Chapter 17 A Wedding in Newburgh 101 Chapter 18 A Wedding in New Delhi 107 Chapter 19 Return to Wall Street 117 Chapter 20 The Artful Dodger 123 Chapter 21 Yin and Yang 131 Chapter 22 The Mortgage Puzzle 136 Chapter 23 Hedge Funds Behaving Badly 147 Chapter 24 Escape from the Sell Side 157 Chapter 25 The Buy Side: Life of a Hedge Fund Manager 166 Chapter 26 The Buy Side II: Dealers Behaving Badly 174 Chapter 27 It's Not Research, It's Marketing 183 Chapter 28 House of Cards 191 Chapter 29 Fleeing the Titanic 197 Chapter 30 The 2008 Financial Crisis 209 Chapter 31 The 103-Month Streak 217 Epilogue The Closer 225 Acknowledgments 228Table of Contents
