July 1, 2020
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice
Bill Browder
If you’ve ever been tempted to buy a Russian stock, please read this book first. What looks to be a mouth-watering “value,” may be cheap for a reason. The author traces his profitable adventures running a hedge fund in the first half of the book and exposing corporate and governmental corruption in Russia. His successes eventually provoke the Russian government to respond, which leads to the author’s inability to enter Russia and, tragically, to an associate’s torture and death. The second half of the book details the author’s fight for justice and the eventual passage of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S., which blocked suspected Russian human rights abusers from entering the United States. An entertaining read, though most value investors will probably find the author’s bumpy road to hedge fund success more interesting than the remainder of the book which documents his efforts to fight back against the Russians.