Tag: Risk

Nassim Will Speak at the 8th Annual SALT Conference in Las Vegas May 10-13

On By In Conferences

Along with a long list of global thought leaders, Nassim will be speaking at this year’s SALT Conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas on the weekend of May 10-13th:

The SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference is committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities within the context of a dynamic global economy. With thought leaders, public policy officials, business professionals and investors from over 42 countries and 6 continents, the SALT Conference provides an unmatched opportunity for attendees from around the world to connect with global leaders and network with industry peers.

SALT is produced by SkyBridge SALT, LLC, an affiliate of SkyBridge Capital, a global investment firm with approximately $12.6 billion in assets under management or advisement as of January 31, 2016. Unique and forward looking, SkyBridge Capital is a pioneer in the alternative asset management industry leading an evolution in the fund of funds space. SkyBridge has redefined the fund of funds investment model by developing a thematic and tactical multi-strategy investment approach to consistently generate attractive risk-adjusted returns. The firm’s investment strategy is enhanced by their unparalleled access to industry decision makers and global financial leaders – including money managers, economists and policy makers– whose insights are integral to shaping our global outlook and opportunity sets. The firm is headquartered in New York and also has a presence in Zürich, Switzerland and Seoul, South Korea.

Tail Risk Measurement Heuristics

On By In Academic, Videos

Nassim kicks off The Bank of England’s One Bank Flagship Seminar, the first such seminar offered by the bank in an effort at greater transparency:

The first part of this talk – The Law of Large Numbers in the Real World – presents fat tails, defines them, and shows how the conventional statistics fail to operate in the real world, particularly with econometric variables, for two main reasons: 1) we need a lot, a lot more data for fat tails; and 2) we are going about estimators the wrong way. The second part – Detecting Fragility – presents heuristics to detect fragility in portfolios. Fragility is shown to be ‘anything that is harmed by volatility’. The good news is that while (tail) risk is not measurable, fragility is.

How Increasing Benefits Increases the Risk of Ruin

On By In MOOCs, Videos

Explains why you do not decrease tail risks by increasing benefits, you decrease tail risk by decreasing tail risk. This is a very short exposition of a fallacy quite generalized, but particularly present in discussions concerning the benefits of GMO. Biologists dealing with probability have a problem with tail risk. —- Also sows why “Pascal’s wager” has nothing to do with risk arguments. — Technical Note: By “variance” is meant in the lingo of the author the scale of the distribution: this is a Student T with infinite variance (as one can see above) and \sigma is the scale.