A bit of a chat with Nassim Taleb – the author of Fooled by Randomness and Black Swans. I have never really been one of Talebs fans since Fooled by Randomness seemed to be a long series of self justifications as to why he couldn’t trade. The central undercurrent of the book seemed to be…

To offer a counterpoint to Talebs notion of luck being the arbiter of all success a piece called what Lucky People do Different

I have written before about how those with the moral of a pox ridden alley cat had tried to blame the Black and Scholes equation for the GFC This very clever little graphic puts that notion to bed. Source – Quant

The Yanks do some things well – this sort of PBS doco is one of them PS My first attempt to load it in Chrome didn’t go so well – I had better luck with Firefox.

Remembering is one thing – doing something is another Soldier On Legacy

I noticed this in the footnotes of this article – The Crisis of Big Science In his recent book, The Infinity Puzzle (Basic Books, 2011), Frank Close points out that a mistake of mine was in part responsible for the term “Higgs boson.” In my 1967 paper on the unification of weak and electromagnetic forces, I…

Apple makes up more than 4% of the S&P500 and more than 18% of the Nasdaq 100

Excellent paper by VoxEU.org on behaviour around what are considered improbable events. Predicting the improbable Claus Bjørn Jørgensen Sigrid Suetens Jean-Robert Tyran 22 April 2011 Japan’s trio of tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear disaster has left the world stunned. As this column points out, even the experts were shocked. But while these events were highly unlikely,…

Anyone who has been to Vancouver will attest to the fact that it is a magnificent city – one of the few places where you can go sailing in the morning and skiing in the afternoon. In recent years it has been in the grip of a ferocious property bubble that puts the ones seen…

The markets section of the WSJ is currently running a piece titled the  World is Bitten by the Gold Bug. “Gold continued its upward march in a time of global financial tumult, closing above $1,500 an ounce Thursday for the first time as investors seek safe haven in the metal. In a remarkable performance for…

If you thought the responses on our politicians to serious problems was somewhat of a joke consider the case of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Texas is in the grip of a severe drought much like parts of Australia had been. His response is to call for a national three days of praying for rain. TO…

If you thought the responses on our politicians to serious problems was somewhat of a joke consider the case of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Texas is in the grip of a severe drought much like parts of Australia had been. His response is to call for a national three days of praying for rain. TO…

The markets section of the WSJ is currently running a piece titled the  World is Bitten by the Gold Bug. “Gold continued its upward march in a time of global financial tumult, closing above $1,500 an ounce Thursday for the first time as investors seek safe haven in the metal. In a remarkable performance for…