Physicists

As tenure disappeared and research jobs became harder financial markets became a a fertile job market for newly minted Ph.D physicists who equipped with very powerful mathematical toolboxes set about conquering the market. This piece by SCiAM is more a fluff piece rather than anything concrete but it does give these blokes some good PR.…

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The Illusion Of Understanding

The ever interesting and insightful Tim Hartford makes mention of the illusion of understanding complex systems in his latest blog. Switch on any business TV channel and you’ll be bombarded with scrolling quotes and jagged graphs. It’s all very well if you like to watch that kind of thing, but the flow of financial data…

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What A Pack Of Dicks

This is from the Spanish – you will notice that the peanuts have also banned short selling of their index. It is good to see that cretinism is a universal human trait as is a complete lack of understanding as to how markets and economies work. Due to extreme market volatility, the Spanish regulator CNMV…

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The Perils Of Paulson

Yesterday I posted a piece that looked at the performance of various fund managers in the current market. One of those profiled was Jeremy Paulson. This piece looks at some of  the difficulties faced by such a large fund manager whose outlier performance numbers  might be fleeting. The hedge fund manager became an overnight sensation…

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Jeremy Grantham

Jeremy Grantham the head of GMO is known for his quarterly essays to investors. Unlike other fund managers who letters to investors dont contain the usual postdictive crap and what has just happened but rather look at the big picture of what is happening in the world. Sitting in a Panera in Boston’s financial district…

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