http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDVgqxiT9RSg&refer=home
So, what does he do? Mainly buys out of the money puts and calls?
Only a small part of his money is in that, most of it is in Government bonds. That or the fact that it is a relatively straight-forward strategy neither confirms nor falsifies the hypothesis that he is a genius.
best quote: We refused to touch credit default swaps,'' Taleb said. It would be like buying insurance on the Titanic from someone on the Titanic.’’
I read his book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ which was very interesting except for the fact that this guy is so full of himself. I’d say 1/3 of the book is just ego, the other 2/3 is pretty good. No question that this guy’s intelligence is off the charts, I’m just got tired of reading about how little he thought of people who were not as smart or well-read as he is. I haven’t read the ‘Black Swan’ for this reason. I might pick up a copy soon though and just skim over the ego junk.
whodey Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I read his book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ which was > very interesting except for the fact that this guy > is so full of himself. I’d say 1/3 of the book is > just ego, the other 2/3 is pretty good. > > No question that this guy’s intelligence is off > the charts, I’m just got tired of reading about > how little he thought of people who were not as > smart or well-read as he is. > > I haven’t read the ‘Black Swan’ for this reason. > I might pick up a copy soon though and just skim > over the ego junk. I agree, I am on the last chapter at the moment and some parts of the book are so full of ego & BS. A section comes to mind where he accuses doctors of ‘possibly’ prescribing drugs when a patient only has a 2% chance of the ailment making it look like that doctors test every patient w/o first having a subjective diagnosis.
Hey, anyone who can put up these numbers in this environment is a genius to me!!! “Returns for the year through Oct. 10 ranged as high as 110 percent, according to investor documents. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 39 percent in the same period”
"We would like society to lock up quantitative risk managers before they cause more damage,’’ Taleb said.
FBR is a decent book. TBS is almost unreadable.
But I thought everything could be modeled by the normal distribution?! (joke)
equity_analyst Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hey, anyone who can put up these numbers in this > environment is a genius to me!!! > > “Returns for the year through Oct. 10 ranged as > high as 110 percent, according to investor > documents. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 39 > percent in the same period” Yeah, but I would like to see numbers on the monthly bleed while waiting for the fat tail event. Can anybody post long term performance numbers for Universa and Emperica.
I am an equity options market maker and a lot of us lost a lot of money selling out of the money puts. As the stock drops not only are those puts worth a ton of money but the volatility skyrockets (which is how the option is valued) making it worth even more. Option that some people sold for a fifty bucks were worth 1000 in a matter of two weeks!
kurtosis!!!
leptokurtic
bimbotic
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