It is not often a journalist creates anything worthwhile but Alfred Winslow Jones, a one-time Fortune hack widely regarded as the father of the hedge fund industry, proved a rare exception to this rule, writes Steve Johnson.

In truth, other pioneers had blazed a trail for Jones, most notably Jesse Livermore. A farmer’s boy from Massachusetts who ran away from home at 15, Livermore mastered the art of short-selling so well that, in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, he was sitting on a reputed fortune of $100m.