taleb has a nice, cushy, well paying tenured job as a professor at a major university in NY, which gives him an opportunity to spout what some consider to be dribble or nonsense. it is irrelevant because he has people skills. influential people like him and welcome him into their circles. when it comes to blowups, let's not forget neiderhoffer.
It wasn't supposed to, but bleed continuously until there is a market crash. So in years without a crash he probably lost 15-20%, and when the market makes let's say 5-10%, that is a pretty bad under performance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirica_Capital "One of Empirica's funds, Empirica Kurtosis LLC, was reported to have made a 60% return in 2000 followed by losses in 2001, 2002, and single digit gains in 2003 and 2004 a period when hedge funds posted average returns of 20% and 9% respectively. Taleb claimed that he shut down Empirica LLC, in 2005 to become a "writer and a scholar." Buying puts doesn't take up much time, it sounds like a BS excuse...Although he had a health care too at that time.
Sure there is, but whether someone grasps math or not is a direct function of intellect. Don't blame the messenger.
That's not his performance metrics at all. You may want to get the figures right. Especially the fund he advises now looks way better than you make it out to be
too vague. if you have numbers with links present them. if not you are like marketsurfer who never presented figures for the advisor he was shilling for. whatever happened to marketsurfer. was he banned again?
Why couldn't Taleb clean up after 9/11? http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/2009/06/talebs-stranded-swan/ -------------------------------------- His former partner Mark Spitznagel's HF: "When things do go very wrong for the underlying markets, however, they go very right for Universa. As the Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 38.5% by the end of 2008, the fund increased its investors’ money tenfold. Spitznagel says that investors generally allocate about 1% of an investment portfolio to fund such a “black swan protection protocol." https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0627/money-guide-11-spitznagel-black-swan-cnbc-protect-tail.html
Actually, I have just posted his former partner's metrics and he says they lose 1% monthly when no crash. But feel free to post Taleb's numbers, they are not available for all the years, you have to pick up clues from here and there. And that itself tells you a lot, when he is unwilling to discuss his real life performance. For example the already posted conundrum of why he didn't clean up after 9/11? How does a black swan fund lose money in the year of a black swan?