Holmes on The Alchemy of Finance

Oct 16, 2026 · 0:37

Holmes opens The Alchemy of Finance, by George Soros. Watson: a manual for getting rich? Holmes: a theory, tested on his own fund; reflexivity. Prices are always biased, and the bias reshapes the facts. Chapter two: a conglomerate that doubles with dear stock sees earnings per share jump fifty percent. Part three, his diary: the fund up one hundred twenty-six percent in eleven months. Mrs Hudson: would it keep me past chapter two? Holmes: dense, he confesses; for anyone sure markets are right.

The Alchemy of Finance, by George Soros, is a theory tested on his own fund: market prices are always biased and the bias reshapes the facts it is supposed to reflect, which he calls reflexivity; chapter two shows the mechanism in the 1960s conglomerate boom, where a company buying with overpriced stock could double its size and see earnings per share jump fifty percent, and part three is the diary of a real-time experiment in which Quantum Fund rose 126 percent in eleven months; he confesses it is a dense book, written for anyone sure the market is always right.

On the book: The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros

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