“ As we approached his car, he began talking about his own performance in 2008. Although he is no longer a full-time trader, he remains a principal in a hedge fund he helped found, Black Swan Protection Protocol. His fund makes trades that either gain or lose small amounts of money in normal times but can make oversize gains when a black swan appears. Taleb likes to say that, as a trader, he has made money only three times in his life — in the crash of 1987, during the dot-com bust more than a decade later and now. But all three times he has made a killing. With the world crashing around it, his fund was up 65 to 115 percent for the year. Taleb chuckled. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” he said finally. “So I decided, to hell with them, I’ll take their money instead.
RISK Mismanagement - What Led to the Financial Meltdown - NYTimes.com
About Me
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
—Emily Dickinson
