Thursday, July 2, 2009

Mark Gimein -> Swan Song: Why Nassim Taleb is Still Wrong

While for just about everyone involved in the markets the last two years of financial history have been a massacre, they have been a long victory lap for Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb is the author of The Black Swan, the book about, as the subtitle puts it, "The Impact of the Highly Improbable." It came out in 2007, just before everything that seemed highly improbable became painfully actual. As everyone else's fortunes have shrunk, Taleb's have risen. Not only have his books made him the public face of the New Catastrophism, but his insights have turned out to be extremely profitable: The Wall Street Journal reports that Universa, a hedge fund for which Taleb serves as guru and adviser, gained more than 100 percent last year and now holds $6 billion.

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