This is just pointless rambling, but due to this turmoil, I had been reminded of Taleb’s book. How important it is to be as anti-fragile as possible in trading and life. It’s a great theory to structure your life around. This is where trading and life merge into single philosophy. Something to think about.
Anti-fragile
- Thread starter qlai
- Start date
First of all, all-around antifragility sounds very good in theory, but in real life you'd find that buying every tail to be completely protected is an unrealistic proposition. There are numerous scenarios possible and if you going to spend money and effort to protect yourself against it, you gonna have very little left.
Second of all, most people would zoom-in on some very specific risks and ignore other risks. A buddy of mine was telling me that he's treated a guy who got into a car accident - he was not wearing a seat belt, but at his house he had a bunker with canned food, guns and bugout gear.
Finally, probability of tail events is, by definition, hard to know. So you don't want to be too long and you definitely don't want to be short. However, it's worth owning some modicum of tails to avoid a complete blow-up.
And also how do you define "tail risk". What would you qualify as "tail risk"? The risk of a nuclear disaster? asteroid hitting the earth? a natural disaster that knocks out the power of an entire city? So which one do you protect against? Do you hedge against an asteroid hitting the earth and ignore the local flood or do you protect against tornado but forget about the nuclear disaster?
Instead of buying protections, perhaps we should go out and hunt for black swans instead?
Or create black swans. LOL
Are you telling me you are not practicing social distancing?
Are you telling me you are not practicing social distancing?
Leave the pandemic alone!! It's not a black swan!! LOL Upsetting Iran is more like it.
Last edited:
Covid was a white swan. Everybody knew about it but the market did not fall until late February.
Covid is more like a grey swan. Everybody knew about it but nobody thought it would impact the market; everybody thought the West is somehow immune to viruses. It's only China, the "Sick Man of Asia" who gets sick. LOL
I am close to such a strategy, because I think it is necessary to do business either seriously or not to do it at all. Because every case requires strength and time from you, and if we talk about trading, then money is not the last thing that matters. And if you do it just because it's prestigious or one of your friends does it, it will never bring you the necessary results. And if you take it seriously and it gives you maximum pleasure, then there is every chance that you can easily cope with all the difficulties and ambiguous situations, and you can bring the started business to the end. A person has to love the job he is doing, otherwise he can never be successful.