Negative carry, pariah profits…and game of thrones
BRIC Breaker on Brazil and that other country where people are also investing…
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Recent Posts
Taleb and Niederhoffer by Gladwell.
Originally published by The New Yorker in 2002 – this Malcolm Gladwell article on Nassim Taleb and Victor Niederhoffer is still a decent read. Specially when it highlights Daniel Kahneman’s influence on Taleb and the complex music/volatility conundrum (“Mahler is not good for volatility,”). and this final paragraph is harrowing:
“This kind of caution does not seem heroic, of course. It seems like the joyless prudence of the accountant and the Sunday-school teacher. The truth is that we are drawn to the Niederhoffers of this world because we are all, at heart, like Niederhoffer: we associate the willingness to risk great failure — and the ability to climb back from catastrophe–with courage. But in this we are wrong. That is the lesson of Taleb and Niederhoffer, and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable.”
Commas
Hedge-funds:2 books, 2 visions (the average and the “genius” ) as reviewed by The Economist
“When valuing a startup, add $500k for every engineer, and subtract $250k for every MBA.” – Ben Horowitz from Andreeseen Horowitz
“…when beer writers imagine heaven, it looks exactly like the Southampton Arms.“
a brilliant review by Geoff Dyer of Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station
Commas
“Brokers try to flog you things, good advice costs a lot less.” – The last in a line of gentlemen bankers,
“A little business with a little profit and an entire regularity is happiness sterling to the true merchant; while a large business, expecting large profits, but in confusion and disorder, may be flattering but creates much anxiety and little comfort.” – advice from Barclays’ founding families,
naming particles – “The name (quarks) was based on a line from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”
Leap Motion:3D gesture control….
Granta and the ‘best young Brazilian novelists’
Lockmann.org 