tend to agree with you jrumph, I really thought I would love Black Swan, but I had to struggle to finish it. He really just came across as a complete w*nker - how many times can you say “only I know what is going on, I am the smartest person to ever pull on a pair of underpants” before it becomes annoying?
he’s way too arrogant for me. i also like how he says everything is random, yet runs a hedge fund. makes sense to me.
it is sort of like warren buffet telling everyone to invest in index funds, yet he runs a giant hedge fund himself.
He’s doing “stupid person” arbitrage. Taking money from people he thinks are stupid, and charging 2-and-20 on random gyrations.
I’ve read both Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. In fact, it was Taleb’s books that piqued my interest in finance. Before that I was working for a defense contractor (an experience I wouldn’t recommend to anyone). I agree that Taleb can come across as being extremely arrogant but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t valid arguments, and it seems that what he despises most is epistemic arrogance. I think it is very important to always be willing to say “I’m not so sure about that,” especially when it comes to predicting human behavior. There is much to learn about complexity theory and how it relates to finance. I say it’s definitely worth the read.
Finally decided to read the book and 90% done. Most of it is a waste of space. He could’ve condensed his arguement from 300 pages to 100. What he says makes sense about human nature not knowing the unknown unknown or not factoring it in and etc. The best thing you can take from the book based on my own interpretative twist is that one should accept the fact that there will always be big unexpected situations and one should be prepared for it. A typical situation is now. The market is going down and everyone is selling off. No one would’ve expected it a year ago that it would be this bad (and probably going to be worse) but if you’re prepared you’ll be buying certain stocks that have been attractive and finally looking attractive based on valuation.
Not to sound too much like Taleb, but I think 90% of the people in this thread totally missed the point of his books. So many people seem to be complaining that he is too academic. Granted, he does have a very high-brow way of writing (which I find to be full of wit and very entertaining) and can come off a bit arrogant. But he is a heretic to the entire financial/economics academics establishment. He makes the point over and over that academics don’t know what they’re talking about and that he intends to build a ground-up theory from a practitioner perspective. He heaps an immense amount of scorn on academics who are completely out of touch with the real world. Call him arrogant, but too academic? C’mon! And I think that his arrogance is somewhat deserved - after all, he made most of his money in October 1987 when many investors were completely wiped out. I guess it’s not that suprising that his work goes unappreciated on this forum. After all, if he’s right, then most of us are just charlatans wasting our time and money.
^ I agree. At the end of the day, you can have all your excel models to try predict crap but something unexpected happens blows it to bits. Ha, try modeling your own income statement for the next ten years. He made his money from 1987. He had out of the money options that became way in the money. But think about it. He made off on a long shot. He even says in the book about investing 90% in safe govt securities and 10% in high risk ventures. Is this really the best investing strategy? I interpret that like saying let me put 90% into tbonds and 10% betting on sports parlays. That seems pretty dumb because if I lose the entire 10% over time, I will be left with two options - reallocate some of bonds into the parlays again or just sit only on tbonds. Not the best piece of advice. It’s a thought provoking book and I think it is amazing because of that. It’s not well written structurally as a published piece nor aimed for the average reader or someone who isn’t involved in the analyzation and decision making of certain fields (let’s say investments). Overall, I’d recommend it only to those who are extremely analytical.
I’m still not convinced - he’s tried to make a science out of making a few small bets that the sh*t will hit the fan and hoping like hell that when it does you: a) are still solvent by the time it comes around, and b) your small bets are actually in the right place to make some money It’s an interesting idea, but certainly not deep enough to flesh out into school of thought or whatever Taleb is trying to make it seem. To be honest I think he’s a wannabe philosopher in search of a philosophy.
newsuper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > To be honest I think he’s a wannabe philosopher in > search of a philosophy. I agree. I wouldn’t be as strong in my convictions if I hadn’t met him personally. To be honest, that probably ruined any chance I had of enjoying either book. He was just so arrogant and condescending, without reason, that I couldn’t stand him. The funny thing was that some HF that touted their “Black Swan Protection Protocol” that was advised by Taleb, pitched to us a few days after I got back to the office. It was just a call, but the guys on the other end of the line clearly had no idea what they were talking about other than just to throw out a few buzzwords and “Black Swan” every once in a while. We never even got to the point of asking them what exactly Taleb’s role was in the process.
newsuper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > To be honest I think he’s a wannabe philosopher in > search of a philosophy. I couldn’t disagree more. He has an incredible command of philosophy from the ancient to the modern, and even more incredibly applies philosophy to the discipline of quantitative trading. He blends/critiques the ideas of Plato, Hume, Popper, Hayek - and you call him a wannabe philosopher? I would argue that he is much more of a philosopher than many self-styled “academic” philosophers. Part of what made his books so interesting to me is the blend of the qualitative, philosophical insights with quantitative statistical concepts. Is he arrogant and condescending? Sure, he can be. But so are many of the posters on this forum, regarding much more petty issues.