Back in the Middle Ages, a lot of "fiction" was written in the form of a dialogue between a protagonist and some antagonist. As you read the dialogue, the argument would go back and forth, with the protagonist finally winning (surprise). Kessler's recounting of running a hedge fund during the late 90's borrows from these Middle-Aged tales, in that he's always asking questions, and everyone else is filling him in as to how things work.
Of course, as he educates himself about the tech industry, he's trying to synthesize all this information. He uses a device character, a Mr. Zed, who continually prompts Kessler to find out why things are the way they are in the dotCom boom.
But then Kessler goes nuts theorizing about macroeconomics. He argues that if the US keeps making high-margin goods, and the rest of the world makes low margin goods, then trade deficits don't matter, because we'll always be able to earn more money from our high-margin goods, than from our lower-margin debt payments to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, high-margin ideas are sporadic and risky (hence the high rate of return), while debt payments must always be made. As we borrow more, the risk of our default rises, so lenders will charge higher-margins for their debt, which crowds out all but the highest-margin industries. This will starve those not-so-high margin industries, but we need their output to help make our debt payments. As they starve, our economy shrinks and so does our ability to make payments, which drives up the interest rate lenders are willing to lend us at, furthering the decline.
Kessler made a slew of money investing the ballooning tech companies, and then exited at the apex of the boom. So, he's apparently filling his time with thinking about this stuff, but in an unorganized fashion. I really hope he hasn't let all this get to his head. That'd be a shame, because this book shows that he's at least intelligent to take advantage of opportunities around him, but it seems that he lacks the intellectual rigor to do some analyses right.
Regardless, he is right on when it comes to understanding the market
Stocks are a voting mechanism, pure and simple. They are a collective vote of expectations of each company's future fundamentals. If investors think business will improve, that earnings estimates will rise, then the stock is going up. If investors think the end is near, a company is about to roll over, a stock will go down. It doesn't mean that those fundamentals ever happen.
Note the difference in articles used above for the stock that goes up, and a stock that goes down. "The" stock has your attention, "a" stock doesn't. Gotta love that loss aversion.