Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • The Quants

  • How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It
  • By: Scott Patterson
  • Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
  • Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (98 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
The Quants cover art

The Quants

By: Scott Patterson
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

A Man for All Markets cover art
The Bond King cover art
Liar's Poker cover art
Fooled by Randomness cover art
Barbarians at the Gate cover art
Black Monday cover art
The New Market Wizards cover art
The Signal and the Noise cover art
Best Loser Wins cover art
Market Wizards cover art
A History of the United States in Five Crashes cover art
Against the Gods cover art
Inside the Black Box cover art
Security Analysis: Sixth Edition cover art
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator cover art
Money Men cover art

Summary

In March 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with ­million-dollar stakes. At the card table that night was Peter Muller, who managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT. With him was Ken Griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group. There, too, were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, and Boaz Weinstein, chess “life master” and king of the credit-default swap.

Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. Over the past 20 years, this species of math whiz had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk takers who’d long been the alpha males of the world’s largest casino. The quants believed that a cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift ­billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. Few realized that night, though, that in creating this extraordinary system, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein had sown the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.

©2010 Scott Patterson (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"Scott Patterson has the ability to see things you and I don't notice. He does an admirable job of debunking the myths of black box traders and provides a very entertaining narrative in the process." (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times bestselling author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan)

What listeners say about The Quants

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    41
  • 4 Stars
    35
  • 3 Stars
    15
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    33
  • 4 Stars
    16
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    32
  • 4 Stars
    16
  • 3 Stars
    10
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The men who blew up the workd

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Read this to understand how a collection of semi professional gamblers and cash hungry, over achieving maths graduates built the financial H bombs that nuked the global economy.

What will your next listen be?

Emotional Intelligence

Which scene did you most enjoy?

The description of the challenge poker session between the Quant analysts just before the whole system almost collapsed.

Do you think The Quants needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

Nope, not until the next catastrophe at any rare.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fell in love with every aspect of this book.

This book motivates me on degree amazing!!! Good accounts of what happens and dramatisation of the process.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent narrative of the rise of quant trading

Good characters and gives a broad overview of the major players. Lacks some detail understandably because the players are secretive by nature

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Rubbish, goes around the same topics, same people

The book has no depth. It continues in a cycle of the same people, the same storys and never moves past some important questions that it asks but never answers.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Reads like a novel

Too much drama (sometimes made up), too little facts. Lots of hyperbole. Interesting subject and wide coverage.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!