Narrates the spectacular rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management, 1993-98. The disgraced John Merriwether assembled former Salmon traders, leading academics, and investment capital into a quantitative, secretive hedge fund. Relying on models to reduce anticipable risk, leverage to magnify gains, and bravado to minimize trading costs, LTCM initially did so well as to return client funds, in order to trade entirely for its own benefit. The Russian default of 1998 exposed excessive faith in (low) probability of risk, and concentration of risk inherent in leverage, sending the firm spiraling toward bankruptcy. Because LTCM traded many bespoke instruments, many of Wall Street’s blue-chip firms were implicated as counterparties, threatening system malfunction. The Federal Reserve orchestrated a fraught bailout. Mostly brisk and dramatically told.