taleb is so incredibly overrated. he's an extremist who only sees black and white and refuses to inspect any of the grey. not saying his stuff are completely weak because he does make sense on some levels, but still, he's one of the most astoundingly close-minded ego's to ever print any financial theoretical text...
He most likely speaks or understand couple of languages. Native US english only speaker cannot understand how latin , slavic and arabic grammar can aid in very emotionaly descriptive( flowery ) use of english
Ah, no, that's not what Empirica was doing. Betting on the wings and waiting for lightning to strike is a fair qualitative description, but the strategies are a little more involved than that. His returns were and are very good, far better than Niederhoofer's or those of any of his unimaginative little clones running loose in the marketplace with their little databases and curvefitting, er, pattern matching algorithms. Emprica did a bunch of stuff for a bunch of different people. And, as has been noted elsewhere, the customers Taleb cut loose from Empirica are out in the marketplace actively recruiting "long wings/volatility" traders/advisors to fill the hole left by Empirica's scaling back. There is nothing magic about finding cheap bets on future movement: a few trips through Natenberg and you'll know pretty much everything you need to know. The hard part is sitting on your hands between laying out the bet and collecting.
Quants don't love Taleb. Taleb is the diammetric opposite of what 95% of Quants do. Or...think they do. Still, you have a point about his prose stylings. They are a bit...self-indulgent. Mostly, though, I suspect that comes from having a multilingual background.
'97 wasn't his only blowup. Over the course of his career, Niederhoffer has a net return of less than zero. That...is a walking talking definition of "trading badly". The only difference between him and Gekko is better PR.
not accurate. when you say niederhoffer clones, you mean tony crabel, roy niederhoffer and monroe trout?? get your facts straight. ps. by the way, do you find the "sabbatical letter" in the least unusual......? :eek:
This is a bit of a digression but... Dave: Do bear markets even exist? Victor: Bear markets only exist in retrospect. This is one of the greatest fallacies in the market. One of the main philosophical points in our book is that itâs guaranteed to happen. This is tautological. Everything exists in retrospect. I mean, we have to observe anything (as an input then as a thought) for it to be real or exist. Bear markets, lattes, cute girls, etc. Either I'm totally misunderstanding him or he's out to lunch.
i'll attempt to explain what was meant by the question and what he meant by the answer. the question could have been worded clearer, in retrospect. i don't want to place words in the doctors mouth, but to my understanding, this is what he meant: one does not know it is a bear market until one looks back on it. in day to day trading, it is impossible to ascertain " bear market" until one observes in retrospect. remember we are speaking of "existing" in terms of trading functionality, not conciousness type definitions. in addition, "bear market" is a subjective term with no clear meaning. THEN, you need to read the next question/ answer. cute girls and lattes exist in the present, bear markets do not--at least in my world !