Nasim Taleb Speaks Wednesday

gbos · Apr 21, 2007

Havenât read his last book but have read some of the draft chapters he had uploaded to his homepage two years ago. If you enjoy reading books then buy it but donât expect this book to make you rich. You will enjoy reading it thought â¦

Quote from one of the draft chapters â¦

They Think too Slow

âFat Tonyâ, whom we should perhaps more thoughtfully style
âHorizontally-Challenged Tonyâ, is not objectively as overweight
as his nickname indicates; it is just that his body shape makes
whatever he wears seem ill-fitted. He only wears tailored suits,
many of them cut for him in Rome; but they look as if he bought
them from a web catalogue. He has think hands, hairy fingers,
wears a gold wrist-chain, and reeks of the licorice candies that he
devours in industrial quantities as a substitute for an old smoking
habit. He doesnât usually mind people calling him Fat Tony,
but he much prefers to be called just Tony. In the days when I
hang around with him, I used to call him more politely âBrooklyn
Tonyâ, but he actually lives in Staten Island, which is what people
from Brooklyn started doing 20 years ago.
Early on in my career, I contracted the habit of appending
the honorific designation âBrooklynâ to those street-smart kids,
unburdened by a college education, who came to work in financial
companies in the 1970s and 1980s as the financial activities
in New York city were expanding. They provided me with an infinite
reservoir of wisdom, a steady supply of information, and a
great source of entertainment. I called people endearingly
âBrooklyn Carmineâ or âBrooklyn Joeyâ; indeed the prefix
Brooklyn transcended geography; it meant to imply nononsense,
street wit, fast thinking, and some generally stringent
code of ethics of how one should stand by his friends in difficult
situations. In short, streetsmart and nonnerd.
Tony is a successful nonnerd with a happy disposition. He
leads a gregarious existence; his sole visible problem seems to be
his weight and the corresponding nagging by his family, remote
cousins, and friends. Nothing seemed to work; Tony often goes to
a fat farm in Arizona to not eat, lose a few pounds, then gain
almost all of them back in his first-class seat on the plane back. It
is remarkable how his self-control and personal discipline, otherwise
admirable, failed to apply to his waistline.
He started as a clerk in the back-office of a New York bank
in the early 1980s, in the letter of credit department. He pushed
papers and did some grunt work. Later he grew to giving small
business loans and figured out the game of how you can get financing
from the monster banks, how their bureaucracy operated,
and what they liked to see on paper. All the while being an
employee, he started acquiring property in bankruptcy proceedings,
buying them from banks. His big insight is that bank employees
who sell you a house thatâs not theirs just donât care as
much as the owners; Tony knew very rapidly how to talk to them
and maneuver . He also, later, learned to buy and sell gas stations
with money borrowed from small neighborhood bankers.
Tony worked briefly on the trading desk of a bank in foreign
exchange where I met him and became work-friends, not just for
his funny jokes and playfulness, but as a sounding board in my
activities. I used his penetrating wisdom and his extraordinary
knowledge of corporate affairs as an appendage to my thinking .
Tony did not stay long in trading, as he rapidly realized that it
was a game with too many people chasing the shekels. He has
this remarkable habit of trying to make a buck effortlessly, just
for entertainment, without straining, without office work, without
meeting, just by melding his deals into his private life.
Tonyâs motto is âfinding who the sucker isâ. Obviously they are
the banks: âthe clerks donât care about nothingâ. Finding these
suckers is second nature to him. I used to take walks with Tony
around the block and felt considerably more informed of the texture
of the world just âtawkingâ to him.
I found the perfect nonBrooklyn in someone I will call Dr.
John. He is a former engineer currently working as an actuary
for a bank. He is thin, wiry, wears glasses, a dark suit with, usually,
a red tie. He lives in a suburb in New Jersey not far from
Fat Tony but they certainly rarely run into each other. Tony
never takes the train, and, in reality, never commutes (he drives
a Cadillac and, sometimes, his wifeâs Italian convertible and
jokes that he is more visible than the rest of the car). Dr. John is
master of the schedule; he is as predictable as a clock. He quietly
and efficiently read the newspaper during his commute. While
Tony makes restaurant owners rich, John meticulously packs his
sandwich every morning, with a fruit salad in a plastic container.
As to his clothing, he wears a suit that, too, looks that it comes
from a web catalogue; except that it is quite likely that it actually
came from a web catalogue.
Dr. John is a painstaking fellow, reasoned, gentle; and he
takes his work seriously, so seriously that, unlike Tony, you can
see a marked difference between his working and his leisure. He
has a Ph.D. in electric engineering but never did academic research.
As he knew both computers and statistics, he was hired
by an insurance company to do computer simulations and enjoyed
the business. He truly only worked as an statistician in the
private sector. In the 1990s, he transferred to a bank because
there was demand for people with a statistical background and
he found similarities between the two activities. Much of what
he does consists in running computer programs called âRisk
Managementâ.
I know that it is rare for Fat Tony and Dr John to breathe
the same air, let alone to find themselves at the same bar, so
consider this a thought experiment. I will ask each a question
separately and compare the answers.
NNT (that is, me): Assume that a coin is fair, i.e. has equal
probability of showing head or tails. I throw it and get heads 99
times. What are the odds of my getting tails at the next throw?
Dr. John: Trivial question. Of course one half since you are
assuming 50% odds for each and independence between draws.
NNT: What do you say, Tony?
Fat Tony: Iâd say no more than 1%, of course.
NNT: Why so? I gave you the initial assumption of a fair
dice, meaning that it was 50% either way.
Fat Tony: You are either full of crap of a pure sucker to buy
that 50% business. The coin gotta be loaded. It canât be a fair
game. (Translation: It is far more likely that your assumptions
about the fairness are wrong than the dice delivering 99 times
heads in 99 throws).
NTT: But Dr. John said 50%.
Fat Tony (whispering to me): I know these guys from the
bank days. They think way too slow.
More...

lowvoltrader · Apr 21, 2007

there is an interview Taleb did recently (& since the time of the malcolm gladwell article) in which he discusses his trading philosophy pretty well (without divulging details of course). As i understand it its two part. first he's looking for bubbles; situations where a stock or future is likely to be bid up excessively and then buying far OTM strangles, for the "home run" potential amd because they represent "black swans" the improbable. for example he talks in Fooled by Randomness about making money off the Mexican Peso crisis of the Mid Nineties and if you pull up the charts you'll see it indeed looks like a bubble. however its a strategy that loses time value say 10 months of the year so it requires great patience. the second part is having other traders sell the bodies of butterflys (while he buys the wings) so collectively he captures time decay on other stocks or futures that are likely to sit for a while. I believe the interview was posted a few months ago in Actuve Trader magazine....

Pekelo · Apr 21, 2007

I will attempt to summarize his new book without reading it:

Shit happens.

OK, that was too short so let's try again:

Shit happens randomly and infrequently, thus you can't plan for it in the long run in any profitable manner...

Was I close???

Thunderdog · Apr 21, 2007

Quote from Allmighty1:

Hey chief;

Whether or not to buy a book? Difficult to answer that one.

If you have any background in math or stats, I believe Taleb's book is essentially worthless.

If you have an interest in trading and are looking for some insight to help you , Taleb NOW SAYS that the subject "bores" him. During his dog & pony show this last week, he literally refused to answer questions related to finance.

Unfortunately what you will find here outside my own comments is a lot of cheerleading from people who would probably have difficulty making correct change of a dollar. In addition to a lot of pseudo intellect, you also have a significant group of fantasy identities (aliases) so you never really know who you are talking to.

If you decide to "pay up" and buy the book, I would consider it no better than going out to see a movie, and then discovering it is a crappy movie. No more no less.

To obtain a quick background on world economics (assuming you have no background) I would suggest "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.

I believe the best books on trading psychology are written by Dr. Ari Kiev. I have to admit my bias here, as I consider Dr. Kiev a friend.

Good luck

A1
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I read Taleb's Fooled By Randomness and very much enjoyed the read. Admittedly, it was what I conceptually already knew, but I thoroughly enjoyed Taleb's take on the subject. I imagine that I will probably buy his swan book in due course for the simple reason that I like his writing style and point of view, even though I don't trade options and don't expect that I ever will.

I think what he has to say has value. Using ET as an example, I find that some people here are just a little too comfortable and complacent in their numbers. Let me give you a true example of something I read here a few years ago. One trader was having second thoughts about his system because he had experienced a consecutive string of losing trades. I don't recall how many it was, but let's say 6 for the sake of argument. He also advised that his thorough historical testing produced a largest string of, say, 7 losing trades. He was then counseled by a well-meaning member to just go for those trades because he will almost certainly be profitable within the next two trades. Of course, this kind of reliance on historical numbers by the "advisor" is downright comical, even if the testing was entirely valid. But how different was LTCM's massive reversion-to-the-mean play that led to its downfall? One is just a variation of the other.

What I got out of his FBR book was a fun read and a reminder to stay humble and not get too smug with my numbers or expectations. To keep my neck in.

As for your reference to Ari Kiev, I read 3 of his books and did not particularly enjoy them. As I recall in his Trading To Win, he talks about having daily trading performance goals measured in dollars. (Correct me if I'm wrong, as I read it some years ago.) Perhaps it is a matter of context, but that is how I read it. Regardless of his impressive credentials and client roster, I think that anyone who has traded the markets for any length of time knows the danger in trying to extract money from the markets when they are not accommodating.

Thunderdog · Apr 21, 2007

Quote from Pekelo:

I will attempt to summarize his new book without reading it:

...

...Was I close???
More...

*Sigh*

IV_Trader · Apr 21, 2007

What is a Black Swan event from the r/r stand point ? 30:1 , 50:1 ?
Those types existing (and happening) in the markets EVERY SINGLE DAY.
An year ago GOOG was downgrade 1 day before expiration and lost 10%. Certain slight out of money puts produced a 250:1 payout !

atticus · Apr 21, 2007

kinggyppo · Apr 21, 2007

Quote from IV_Trader:

What is a Black Swan event from the r/r stand point ? 30:1 , 50:1 ?
Those types existing (and happening) in the markets EVERY SINGLE DAY.
An year ago GOOG was downgrade 1 day before expiration and lost 10%. Certain slight out of money puts produced a 250:1 payout !
More...

good point, there are abnormal range expansions every day on the exchanges. Predicting them is not easy or there would be some awfully rich traders. Does it make sense to buy a lottery ticket (deep out of the money strikes) given the enormous potential payout?

good one · Apr 21, 2007

what % did Taleb make in the 87 crash? I remember reading it, it was absurd.
If i had done that and also wrote Dynamic Hedging I would probly be bored with finance by now also.
He says in fooled by randomness he owns enough treasuries to never have to worry about money again.

just21 · Apr 21, 2007

Quote from jdeezero05:

He says in fooled by randomness he owns enough treasuries to never have to worry about money again.
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I hope he hedged his currency risk!