SuperCash

"James Altucher is scary smart, and also a font of great and original ideas. So it's no surprise that SuperCa$h is so much fun to read and so devilishly informative. It is equally full of 'holy cow!' moments and 'why-didn't-I-think-of-that?' moments. A true keeper."
—Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics

"Altucher describes in easy-to-understand terms the strategies used by the smartest managers in the world—those who are running the hottest hedge funds—to show how they are making money today. SuperCa$h is a great primer for those who are looking to trade like the pros. And it helps that Altucher writes in a clear and fun style!"
—John Mauldin, President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, and author of Bull's Eye Investing

As hedge funds have become more mainstream, some of their strategies are less capable of producing extraordinary returns. In response, hedge fund managers and other sophisticated investors have found new ways to turn cash into supercash. Examine these new ways with hedge fund manager James Altucher and supersize your returns.

Chapter 1. Hedge Funds are the New Banks.

Chapter 2. Activism.

Chapter 3. Buying Delinquent Charge Card Debt.

Chapter 4. Everything You Wanted to Know About PIPES but Were Afraid to Ask.

Chapter 5. The New New IPO.

Chapter 6. Trade Like a Billionaire.

Chapter 7. Closed End Fund Arbitrage.

Chapter 8. ShortSelling.

Chapter 9. The Finer Things in Life.

Chapter 10. Trend vs. Countertrend.

Chapter 11. The Myth of the Index or "ETFS: Active or Passive?"

Chapter 12. Watch Out!

Chapter 13. So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund?

Chapter 14. Classic Investment Reading & New Media Resources.

Chapter 15. Where to Find the Data?

Index.

JAMES ALTUCHER is a partner at the hedge fund firm Formula Capital. He writes for The Street.com and the Financial Times and has been a periodic guest on CNBC’s Kudlow & Cramer. Previously, he was a partner with the technology venture capital firm 212 Ventures and was CEO and founder of Vaultus, a wireless and software company. He holds a BA in computer science from Cornell and attended graduate school for computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Altucher is also the author of Trade Like a Hedge Fund and Trade Like Warren Buffett, both published by Wiley.

Hedge funds, and their strategies, have gained significant recognition for their flexible and aggressive nature towards the markets. But as hedge funds have become more mainstream, the strategies associated with them—such as merger arbitrage, fixed income arbitrage, and convertible arbitrage—have become less capable of generating the returns you’d expect for the risk taken.

To deal with this situation, hedge funds and other savvy investors have found new ways to make it in today’s dynamic financial environment. Actively lending money to companies and individuals that banks won’t or can’t touch; finding arbitrage situations that larger mutual funds are unable to dip into because of size or regulatory constraints; and putting dollars into companies where activism may extract more value from investments are only a few of the ways hedge funds and sophisticated investors are turning cash into supercash in today’s tough markets.

Now, in SuperCa$h: The New Hedge Fund Capitalism, hedge fund manager James Altucher examines the many new types of investments that have been developed over the past few years by top hedge funds and investors around the world. Through detailed examples and up-to-the-minute advice, Altucher reveals how you can take advantage of these investments and offers a dozen strategies that can be used to supersize your returns. Some of the topics discussed include:

• How the PIPE (private investments in public equities) mechanism can provide consistent returns in both bull and bear markets
• A new crop of IPOs—SPAC (the specialty acquisitions corporation), Dutch Auctions, and reverse mergers
• Understanding and implementing a closed-end fund arbitrage strategy
• Shortselling methods that have withstood the test of time
• Art as an alternative asset class that is relatively uncorrelated to the global markets
• And much more

Along the way, Altucher also talks about what to watch out for when investing directly in a hedge fund and offers candid advice for those thinking about starting their own hedge fund.

Turning cash into supercash is not just a style of investing, but a way of life. Striving to maximize the value of your dollars requires nonstop research, patience, courage, and fortitude. Going down the supercash path may be challenging, but the rewards are well worth it.