Reddit reviews When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
We found 24 Reddit comments about When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Random House Trade
PROBLEMS WITH HEDGE FUNDS
One thing you have to hand to hedge funds is that in 2008 and 2009, when investment and commercial banks were all begging for bailouts from the federal government because they were all "to big to fail", thousands of hedge funds died fast and anonymous deaths. Many of them lack the wealth, political connections, and systematic importance to influence the government. If people want to gamble with their money in financial markets, that isn't problematic as long as they are willing to suffer the losses they incur. (It is worth noting that money of them benefited indirectly from the various bank bailouts, and especially the bailout of AIG. Much of the bailout of AIG was to pay off credit default swaps (CDS) on mortgage backed securities, and the proceeds of those CDSs went to certain hedge funds.)
There has been some concern that some of the larger hedge funds could be systematically important, and could cause problems in the future if they place unmitigated bets in financial markets. The Dodd Frank Act made some effort to control them by having them register with the SEC and provide information on their bets to regulators, but as usual the regulation is watered down and many will comply with the letter but not the spirit of the law.
Also, in reviewing the results of most hedge funds, the investors don't seem to be getting a very good deal. First, it's incredibly expensive to pay someone 2% of your money up front and give them 20% of all returns that they earn on the remaining 98% of your money. Many investors would have been better off investing in more conventional vehicles, but the allure of investing in a hedge fund combined with the possibility of outsized returns lures in a lot of people.
The other risk of hedge funds is that they are frauds. Bernie Madoff was running a long short hedge fund, but it was actually a Ponzi scheme. A number of fund of funds were supposed to be diversifying their investor's assets, but were actually just giving it all to Madoff. (It's pretty insulting to pay someone to invest money for you, and give them 2% plus 20%, only to have them dump it all in a Ponzi scheme after performing no due diligence.) Another form of fraud might just be taking on asymmetrical risk. For example if, like AIG, you sell tons of insurance on the housing market, you can pocket a lot of money in the hopes that you never have to pay up on this insurance, and if you do, you just make vague statements about "once in a lifetime" financial calamities.
Further Reading and Sources:
The Economist Guide to Hedge Funds
More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
TL;DR: They are investment vehicles for rich people and institutions that invest in whatever they think will make money. They're supposed to make their investors a lot of money, but they definitely make themselves a lot of money.
Quantitative Finance major here.
High Frequency Trading is insane. Everyone fights to shave off nanoseconds by putting their servers in the room as exchanges, orders are instantaneously cancelled in order to confuse other traders, companies have blasted through mountains in order to get perfectly straight fiber optic cables between point A and B. Order types complicated and predatory towards other traders. Goldman Sachs called the FBI on their own employee because he was suspected of stealing HFT code. On top of it all - the exchanges love HFT. More orders = more money. The exchange you trade on might pay you, or you might pay them but before your trade even gets there - a hedge fund or proprietary trading group might be paying to look at the order before anyone else.
If you're interested in the story, I highly recommend reading Flash Boys, When Genius Failed, and The Quants.
If you're interested in stopping whatever you're doing to learn how to develop machine learning algorithms and work on the street, PM me.
Against The God: the remarkable story of Risk- Outlines the history of probability theory and risk assessment through the centuries
https://www.amazon.com/Against-Gods-Remarkable-Story-Risk/dp/0471295639/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105434&sr=1-1&keywords=against+the+gods
When Genius Failed - A narrative of the spectacular fall of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund which had on its board both Myron Scholes AND Robert Merton (you will recall them from MFE)
https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105453&sr=1-1&keywords=when+genius+failed
Black Swan/ Antifragility- A former quant discusses the nature of risk in these controversial and philosophical books. Some parts of this book are actually called out and shamed in McDonald's Derivative Markets, one or the both of them are worth reading
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility/dp/081297381X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105478&sr=1-1&keywords=black+swan
Godel, Escher, Bach- Very dense look into recursive patterns in mathematics and the arts. While not actuarial, it's obviously very mathematical, a must read.
https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105497&sr=1-1&keywords=geb
Endurance- This was recommended to me by a pure mathematics professor. Again, not actuarial, but more about the nature of perseverance though problem solving(sound familiar). It's about Shakleton's famous voyage to the south pole.
https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/0465062881/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105520&sr=1-1&keywords=endurance+shackleton%27s+incredible+voyage
this is probably because the complexity of the instruments means it would be extraordinarily difficult to decompose into individual mortgages, which means it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. This is in addition to the near-certainty that banks like Citi and Merril have absolutely no interest at all in becoming large-scale landlords.
If this all seems absurd (why would you buy something whose collateral has no real value to you?) it's because it is. The level of hubris and greed behind most of these financial instruments is absolutely stunning.
If you want to get really angry about this, read When Genius Failed about the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Fund & Long-Term Capital Management, its manager. In a couple of places you can see the author basically connecting the dots on the mortgage-backed security problem, but just like no one really called out the derivative implosion that caused the LTCM collapse, despite the writing being on the wall even before it happened, no one was really calling the MBS before it happened either, even if it was obvious to them. (Of course this is not true as a blanket statement, but in general, you're not going to read anything about the danger of MBS's in the mainstream press newer than a couple of years, despite the ability of a journalist, the author of When Genius Failed, to call it out as early as 2001(I can't get a clear idea if '01 was the reprint date or the original publication).)
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
Really interesting read about LTCM's blowup in 1998, especially in hindsight as much of the issues they faced relate to the 2008 financial crisis (dependence on complex derivatives, high leverage, and overconfidence).
The Quants: How a New of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson
Ties in well with the book above because it is about guys doing a lot of the same stuff and many of them getting burned doing it.
Monkey Business: Swinging through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe and Peter Troob
This book is one of the main reasons I was turned off from pursuing a career in investment banking. It's a fascinating glimpse into the industry though.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein
This book has nothing to do with business, but it is one of the craziest true stories I have ever read, and I feel that I need to recommend it to others.
> Hi--I am considering law school and want to focus my studies on LLCs, Corporations, wealth and liability protection, etc...
You are an undergrad? If you want to be a lawyer, study an actual applied topic, now, while you can - and that means not government or english. Economics, computer science, any natural science, most social sciences, history, anthropology. Law is a tool set that without historical context, knowledge of the world at large, horse sense and business savvy is almost completely useless. So unless you are learning actual things, law school isn't going to teach them to you. If you are already out of college, it is not too late. You just have to teach yourself.
I'm exceedingly lucky to have the job I have. And I would not recommend entering this law job market. And one of the primary reasons I actually got this position is before even entering law school I had pretty deep knowledge about the types of business I cared about - I had a background in software and a very high level of financial sophistication for an early twenty something.
If you really want to go to law school, I have to say, it is not a very good investment unless you get in to a t14, get offered a near complete scholarship, have a very unique angle into an industry that you have a pre-existing matching skill set for and the passion to match, or a combination of all of the above. If you are lacking all three of the above, your money and time is far, far, far better spent doing other things.
And if you really want to learn about:
> Corporations, wealth and liability protection, etc...
You won't learn a damn lick of it in law school. You will learn the casebook method. And you will learn all about regulations, formalities, and a whole bunch of shit. But if you are interested in business strategy, which is what it sounds like you are, you can start learning about that now. Start by reading non-fiction business books. And I don't mean bullshit strategy, management or advice books. Use those for kindling. I mean read books about actual businesses, written by serious investigative journalists and businessmen. Here's a short list to get you started:
Just get started, and keep reading. Read about real world businesses - don't read guidebooks about how to do X. See what is in the world and go read it. Are there publicly traded companies that you find interesting? Log on to Edgar and read their public filings. They tell you every goddamn detail of how the business is run, the strategy, the risks they face and how they choose to mitigate them.
Once you get started on this stuff, you will be drawn in and be able to keep up your own research paths. Follow the people on twitter that you find interesting - a lot of VCs are very vocal. Many publish reading lists. Look them up.
But for the love of god, don't think law school will teach you any of this. Corporate law, securities law and corporate finance will teach you the technicalities of all sorts of bullshit you will likely never apply, and, if you do, you will be as good at it as you would be at basketball after having spent three years studying the rules without ever having touched a ball.
Good luck, dotcomrade.
Wow thanks for the gold and the sticky, glad to see other people find this interesting too. Not gonna lie I'm also pretty excited about getting tweeted by MachinePlanet.
It's easy to draw parallels between any 2 things, but the volume of similarities here goes beyond that. I reread Bad Blood recently and didn't see nearly this much overlap. The main takeaway is that both Enron and Tesla started out with good intentions but their arrogance wouldn't allow them to admit when things needed to change.
Anyone interested in this type of thing should definitely check out The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Here's a few other recommendations that cover business failures. And of course if you haven't read Bad Blood yet do that as soon as possible, can't recommend it highly enough.
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Billion Dollar Whale: How an opportunist stole 2 billion dollars from Malaysia's government and blew the money on parties with Leo DiCaprio
https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Whale-Fooled-Hollywood/dp/1478947993
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House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street: The rise and fall of Bear Stearns
https://www.amazon.com/House-Cards-Hubris-Wretched-Excess/dp/0767930894
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When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management: How a hedge fund run by geniuses, including 2 Nobel prize winners, lost 4 billion of capital in just a few years.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259
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Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's Corporate Suicide: How AIG ended up needing an $85 billion bailout during the housing crisis
https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Risk-Cautionary-Corporate-Suicide/dp/0470889802
>September saw a spasm of retrospectives on the 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis. Lost in all of the hoopla was the 20-year anniversary of another collapse — that of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in September 1998. In many ways, that episode was a precursor to the next crisis.
>
>This privately held investment firm believed — incorrectly, we later learned — that it had come up with a new and more profitable way to invest capital. And for a while, it did: Returns soared, with annualized gains after fees of 21, 43 and 41 percent in its first three years. The team had the appearance, according to journalist Roger Lowenstein, of being a “$100 billion money-making juggernaut.”
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>Although the firm’s managers were brilliant — two future Nobel winners had major roles in developing its investing strategies — they made some not-very-smart decisions.
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>This is what happens when too much risk and too much leverage meets too little humility. As detailed by Lowenstein in the masterful book “When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management,” the telling of the LTCM story reads like a crime thriller. But even more important, the story contained many of the themes that played out in the financial crisis.
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>The investment team at LTCM found many small, overlooked opportunities. Thus, it had an edge. But it was so small that it wouldn’t have created any worthwhile gains after expenses. The solution was leverage, and the key was managing the associated risk through hedging strategies.
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>At its peak, LTCM held $124.3 billion of assets against equity of $4.72 billion, for a 26-to-1 leverage ratio.
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>But let’s back up a bit and set the scene leading up to the firm’s collapse. Maybe it will seem familiar:
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> • Falling interest rates led fund managers to reach for yield;
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> • Asset managers searched the backwaters of finance for opportunities in exotic, illiquid credit markets;
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> • A single firm amassed huge derivative positions;
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> • Debt obligations of one firm intertwined with the rest of Wall Street, necessitating the involvement of the Federal Reserve.
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>You know how this ends: It doesn’t take a whole lot of trades to go sour for a fund that’s levered 26-to-1 fund to go bust. If LTCM only had had a few million dollars in holdings, no one would have ever heard of it, and it would have quietly gone bankrupt. But all of those big brains attracted billions of dollars; leverage that up enough and it begins to smell like what we now call systemic risk. By the end of September 1998 as the firm’s trades unraveled, capital had shrunk to a mere $400 million while assets were still more than $100 billion, giving the fund an unsustainable leverage ratio of about 250-to-1.
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>The towering leverage ratio and rapidly depleting equity meant an imminent bankruptcy. The Fed, under the guidance of Alan Greenspan, organized a group of 16 financial institutions to pony up $3.6 billion to keep LTCM afloat while the derivatives and illiquid holdings were unwound over time.
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>In an email exchange, Lowenstein said that the implosion of LTCM had many of the hallmarks of a financial panic. “In 1998, it didn’t feel like a dry run” for 2007, he wrote. “It felt like the end of the world.”
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>Lowenstein added that while the Fed’s rescue of LTCM worked to “soothe traders and numb investors,” it also taught the wrong lesson, namely that “the government would always be there” to help out in a crisis.
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>“Modern finance remains overly complicated.” Lowenstein observed. “Speculation and bubbles are a regular part of markets. Government involvement and the occasional bailout is the default setting, rather than allowing market participants to suffer the consequences of their own actions when the pain would otherwise be too severe.”
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>This was exactly the moral hazard that helped to create the financial crisis. If the collapse of a private hedge fund leads to a bailout, well then, the lesson here is make sure you are big enough, highly leveraged and intertwined with the rest of Wall Street.
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>In a nutshell, Greenspan failed to understand the impact of private gains and socialized losses. In doing so, he set an awful precedent that to this day has not been corrected.
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>“We live in an age of bubbles, perforce of occasional crashes.” Lowenstein said. “The Fed was created as a lender of last resort, and we should expect that its services (at some point) will be called upon again.”
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>It’s obvious that the lessons of LTCM were of no use in preventing the crisis that followed 10 years later. The same can probably be said of the main event in terms of the next crisis, I’m afraid.
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>(Corrects Long-Term Capital Management’s assets in sixth paragraph and leverage ratio in sixth, eighth paragraphs. )
​
The situations you mention were all fairly different. No short explanation will give a good sense of what happened. I don't know that much about Amarath, but there are good books written about the other two.
There's an excellent book about the rise and fall of LTCM.
I don't think the definitive book on the mortgage crisis has been written yet, but Michael Lewis wrote one I thought was pretty informative.
Then:
Finally, always remember the first line in The Money Game.
Good luck!
If he can't finish his degree at least tell him to go read "When Genius Failed". Those guys were really sure they knew the system, they also had multiple Phds and years and years of experience. They also lost a massive amount of money in a short period of time, they had it all worked out -- the computer models, the math, everything.
There is a great book about that called "When Genius Failed"
http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259
Well its not really a trading book but I recently read When Genius Failed and found it not only very interesting but relevant to markets today.
> Is it reasonably possible?
Yes.
> What languages should I learn?
C# or java.
> What contacts should I make?
Recruiters.
> What is the best course of action?
Familiarize yourself w/ finance. Here's a reading list to get you started: After the Trade Is Made, The Essays of Warren Buffett, Too Big to Fail, When Genius Failed.
Thank you for the well thought out reply.
Fat tailed distribution is what your are looking for, or more [popularly black swan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory].
This is a good part of what lead to the downfall of LTCM which if you have not read the book When Genius Failed, I would highly recommend it
For the average person, it's very hard to argue with the advice to invest 10% of your salary into low load broad market index fund (or funds) and follow basic asset allocation rules.
Right now people don't save at all, whihc compounds the social security problem. Basically there's not enough there to keep people 'living comfortably' which leads to ever increasing taxation, which has failed to address the fact that people don't save. So people bitch that SS is not enough yet also bitch that taxes are too high.... Same goes for medicare and a whole host of other govt services.
Not to say those would disappear as they are good programs...
However we seem to be in a death spiral of ever increasing taxation to fuel programs that account for the fact that people fail to save and plan for their financial future..
There are several good books.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439164991/ <- the best. also
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812975219/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/081297381X/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0273731963/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375758259/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470393750/
I read the book about them. By the end they just kept shorting vol hoping mean reversion would bail them out, but the rest of Wall Street squeezed them into oblivion. There really was no algo.
/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.
The following is taken from it:
History
Based on the description, I don't think this is it but maybe the OP had a fundamental misunderstanding of it.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259
But that's my best guess. Or The Quants, but that doesn't really line up with the comment either. Idk.
yah, it was Lowenstein - http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259
Brexit = Death of the Technocrats
Michael Krieger | Jun 24, 2016
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.– J. R. R. Tolkien
What transpired last night in the United Kingdom represented one of the most extraordinarily expressions of democracy of my lifetime.
When faced with an event of such monumental significance, it’s difficult to pick any particular direction for a post like this.
I have so many thoughts running through my mind and so many angles I could potentially address, it is simply impossible to do them all justice.
As such, I’ve decided to focus on one very meaningful implication of Brexit: death of the technocrats.
To start, I want to dive into one of the more interesting controversies from the weeks leading up to the vote.
What I’m referring to is the statement made by Vote Leave’s Michael Grove regarding “experts.”
From the Telegraph(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/06/eu-referendum-who-needs-experts-when-weve-got-michael-gove/):
On Friday night, during an interview on Sky News about the EU, Faisal Islam challenged the Justice Secretary to name a single independent economic authority that thought Brexit was a good idea. Mr Gove’s response was defiant.
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/03/how-did-michael-gove-cope-with-the-sky-news-audience-and-faisal/]
“I’m glad these organizations aren’t on my side,” he said.
“I think people in this country have had enough of experts.”
Mr Islam spluttered incredulously.
People in this country, he repeated, “have had enough of experts?”
Mr Gove stood his ground.
Yes, he said, people in this country had had enough of experts “saying that they know what is best”.
Mr Gove had “faith in the British people”.
The so-called experts, clearly, did not.
For his words, Mr. Gove was attacked relentlessly.
He was lectured about his dangerous language and scolded for its supposed anti-intellectualism.
The “very smart people” issuing these condemnations did so in their typical self-satisfied, smug manner.
Nonetheless, Michael Gove was absolutely correct in his assessment, and in this post I will detail precisely why.
First of all, what is an “expert?”
From what I can gather this term is bestows upon someone with an advanced degree who has successfully maneuvered him or herself into a position of prominence within government, a think tank or academia.
As someone who worked on Wall Street for a decade, I was constantly surrounded by people with advanced degrees from the most prestigious institutions.
I also know that your degree means absolutely nothing the moment you walk in that door for the first day of work.
You enter a place filled with people who have battling it out for years if not decades in their profession of choice, and the only thing that matters now is performance.
If you don’t perform you’re gone, and nobody’s gonna care about the long string of letters next to your name.
The world of politics, government and central banking famously and problematically does not work this way.
Look around you at all the discredited “thought leaders” who continue to be paraded around on television, and who still advise Presidents and Prime Ministers the world over.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis no changing of the guard was permitted.
Sure we were given a fresh face with Barack Obama, but his advisers didn’t change.
He immediately hired both Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, and that’s the moment I knew he was a gigantic fraud.
To summarize, the exact same people who ruined the world bailed themselves out, avoided all accountability and continue to call the shots.
These are the men and women we know as “the experts.”
The point isn’t to say that having an advanced degree in a particular field of study doesn’t make an individual especially useful to society. It does.
The issue here is accountability.
If you want to go around calling yourself an expert and demanding that your views be implemented across a given civilization, you had better do a good job.
If you do a poor job, you should be immediately replaced with someone who has a different perspective.
After all, there are plenty of experts out there to choose from.
Unfortunately, our societies tend to get stuck with egomaniacal, incompetent, but politically savvy experts who never go away.
They can blow up the world a million times over and still somehow survive to call the shots.
This is the main reason the world is in the state it’s in, and it’s the reason reactionary forces are rising across the globe.
The Brexit vote in itself proves the point.
Sure, David Cameron has announced his intention to resign, but where are the the resignations of EU technocrats?
If anyone was discredited by this vote it’s the leadership of the EU, but they aren’t going anywhere.
Why?
Because they’re experts, and experts stay around forever.
Like Larry Summers, bank executives and neocon war mongers, these people never suffer the consequences of their actions and thus remain free to run around endlessly destroying the world from their unassailable perches of power.
That’s the point.
Being an expert does not make you infallible.
Your credentials should certainly offer you a seat at the policy making table, but from that moment on you had better demonstrate performance.
It’s the same way with a corporate job.
The resume gets you in the door, but your production day in and day out keeps you in the seat.
The status quo doesn’t see things this way.
To the status quo technocrat, this is a lifelong position.
They consider themselves to be the wise indispensable elders required to steer the world in the right direction irrespective of any and all calamities they cause along the way.
Unfortunately for us, history shows us that the biggest disasters happen precisely when you combine such expert arrogance with unbridled power.
One of the best modern examples of this relates to the tale of the 1990’s mega hedge fund Long Term Capital Management (LTCM).
A story that was perfectly captured in the excellent book by Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed.(https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259)
The leadership of LTCM was hailed as the best of the best from the beginning and expectations were high.
It’s principals consisted of not only Wall Street veterans but also several former university professors, including two Nobel Prize-winning economists.
Yet, what transpired after only five years in operation was one of the most spectacular failures of modern times.
A train wreck so large and so completely out of control, it required a Federal Reserve led bailout.
What happened with LTCM is happening right now across the political and economic spheres in virtually all nations.
You have a collection of self-assured, arrogant “experts” running the world into the ground with their policies.
As I said earlier, I have no problem with experts.
I have a problem when experts are permitted to operate with zero accountability.
The EU represents such technocratic immunity better than any other in the Western world.
The British people recognized that they couldn’t remove these technocrats from power from within (something proven once and for all by the fact no EU leaders have resigned), so they decided to leave.
I commend that choice and I think the sooner the status quo is disposed of, the greater the likelihood for a positive long-term outcome.
As I warned last year in my post, A Message to Europe – Prepare for Nationalism(https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/11/14/a-message-to-europe-prepare-for-nationalism/):
Actions have consequences, and people can only be pushed so far before they snap.
I believe the Paris terror attacks will be a major catalyst that will ultimately usher in nationalist type governments in many parts of Europe, culminating in an end of the EU as we know it and a return to true nation-states.
Although I think a return to regional government and democracy is what Europeans need and deserve, the way in which it will come about, and the types of governments we could see emerge, are unlikely to be particularly enlightened or democratic after the dust has settled.
My thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims of these horrific events, but the Paris attacks didn’t happen in a vacuum.
The people of Europe have already become increasingly resentful against the EU, something which is not debatable at this point.
This accurate perception of an undemocratic, technocratic Brussels-led EU dictatorship was further solidified earlier this year after the Greek people went to the polls and voted for one thing, only to be instructed that their vote doesn’t actually matter.
Actions have consequences, and we’ve now witnessed the first of these consequences.
The “experts” have warned us of the disaster to befall Great Britain should it Brexit.
Well we now have front row seats from which to observe the outcome of the UK versus large economies that remain in the euro such as France, Spain and Italy in the years ahead.
As usual, I suspect the experts will be wrong.
More: http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/06/24/brexit-death-of-the-technocrats/
After reading this: http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259
I realized that it's all just a crapshoot because you can't accurately model EVERYTHING that will affect market conditions, and that hedge funds are incentivezed to make risky decisions in order to get higher gains.
You're not really gaining anything by investing in a hedge fund like that because you're just trading risk for gains -- just like a normal investor could do.
Read the following books:
You'll find documented proof in those books (and in the other 15 titles I've read on this subject) that everything I wrote is factual.
yes, but they didnt steal money. theres a world of difference, and if you had even a passing knowledge of why LTCM blew up, it had very little to do with scholes' option pricing model, or even how they were pricing bonds, but because they drifted far away from their core strategy (https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259) is a great proxy.
to think that a criminal is in the same class as them is laughable.