An avid reader, Heritage Financial President & CEO, Sammy Azzouz, was asked by Barron’s to provide his top summer reading picks.
“A book I really enjoyed is Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street. It’s about this betting criterion that was developed by a brilliant mathematician and physicist at Bell Labs in the ‘50s. It worked in gambling and was eventually used by one of the first quant investors on Wall Street, Ed Thorp, as well. The book touches on a lot of things that investors and advisors think about, but it’s also a good summer read with interesting nonfinance story lines.
Thorp wrote a book, Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One. He used his skills to beat the casinos at blackjack, roulette, and other table games, which in turn led to a lot of the rules you see now at casinos, including using six decks and automatic shuffling. After the casinos cracked down, Thorp shifted to the markets and became one of the first quant investors. His autobiography, A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market, is tremendous. It’s the book that led me to Fortune’s Formula.”
Read the full article on Barron’s here.
Find more of Sammy’s recommended readings on his personal finance blog The Boston Advisor.