tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post8465742844706579769..comments2024-03-14T11:09:32.759-05:00Comments on Falkenblog: The Audacity of Hopeful InvestingEric Falkensteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-61320317102000765812008-07-08T07:42:00.000-05:002008-07-08T07:42:00.000-05:00Perhaps buying cat bonds (so far, at least)? Not s...Perhaps buying cat bonds (so far, at least)? Not saying I disagree with you, but I think one could find contradicting examplesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-20656742294897619322008-07-07T14:50:00.000-05:002008-07-07T14:50:00.000-05:00j: I can't prove philosophy majors don't have the ...j: I can't prove philosophy majors don't have the highest earnings. There is a lot of data, and I have mentioned much of it, noting that volatility and correlates with risk or uncertainty either have zero or negative correlation to returns, which suggests investing based on hoping for big ones (black swans) is a bad strategy, unless you are merely trying to invest on hope because there's a chance you can win huge. It's a sucker's game.<BR/><BR/>As per inferring 'Taleban' is somehow unsavory, I am referring to the commonality with the distinguishing characteristic of the Taliban, their true-believer thinking, and also playing off Taleb's name, of course. If you take away this is an ethnic or racist slur, it shows how lame Taleb acolytes are, hoping the 'racist' label will overcome their absence of evidence. The Taliban is mainly Arab, but partially Persian and Pakistani; they are muslims. Taleb is a Greek raised in Lebanon and not muslim, so the only connection might be that Taleb understands arabic too, but that would be a strange slur that makes no sense ('he hates Arab speakers!'--ORLY?). It's like me criticizing someone for calling me 'Frankenstein' by saying that is anti-semitic because 'stein' is often in Jewish surnames, a painfully obtuse objection<BR/><BR/>I'm still waiting for an example of uncertainty, risk, or negative skew, that is generally positively correlated with returns (ie, on average).Eric Falkensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-11394338949560334462008-07-07T09:05:00.000-05:002008-07-07T09:05:00.000-05:00There would be a case in here somewhere... However...There would be a case in here somewhere... However, you defeat your own purposes by the abuse of rethoric. <BR/><BR/>In this post, rather than lamenting that "of course, [you] can't prove" a point and berating the commenters ars "Taleban", it would have been more suitable to actually try to prove the (lost) point that was made.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-62787526074330925262008-07-01T20:35:00.000-05:002008-07-01T20:35:00.000-05:00Intelligence would correlate better to income if y...Intelligence would correlate better to income if you left the Philosophy majors out of it. Talk about a group that has no business sense whatsoever.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-31245732219919229692008-07-01T12:36:00.000-05:002008-07-01T12:36:00.000-05:00Arnold: I guess it depends how much logic is in th...Arnold: I guess it depends how much logic is in the core curriculum of philosophy. It can be more like sociology, or math, depending.Eric Falkensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-9814482669800795902008-07-01T08:14:00.000-05:002008-07-01T08:14:00.000-05:00Yeah, engineers and scientists are schills anyway....Yeah, engineers and scientists are schills anyway. It's all smoke and mirrors. Partial differential equations? Calculating eigen values? Fourier transforms? Any idiot can do that. Philosophy on the other hand....well perhaps philosophy majors are intelligent? They chose an easy major to inflate their GPA and party during college whereas the rest of the suckers were stuck in the lab or library till all hours of the night.<BR/><BR/>I saw a statistics floating around that the average starting salary of a UNC pyschology undergrad was $100K+. Some guy named Michael Jordan went there?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-65690585077118579732008-07-01T07:48:00.000-05:002008-07-01T07:48:00.000-05:00My main reason for investing in philosophy majors ...My main reason for investing in philosophy majors is that they tend to be very intelligent, and intelligence correlates with income.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01677375826929404193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-78007134071950418062008-06-30T21:53:00.000-05:002008-06-30T21:53:00.000-05:00I love the way the Taleban thinks merely referenci...I love the way the Taleban thinks merely referencing The Oracle's neologisms is somehow compelling.<BR/><BR/> The bottom line is that people have been studying uncertainty for a long time, and practical examples as to an uncertainty metric invariably are positively correlated with traditional measures of variance or factor loadings. For example, the disagreement of analysts was considered a good proxy, or trading volume as a function of shares outstanding, or parameter uncertainty, or kurtosis, or jumps--all strongly positively correlated with simple variance, and all give the simple suckers relation between risk and return. If you have a metric of uncertainty that is uncorrelated, or negatively correlated, with variance, I'd love to hear it. <BR/><BR/>Of course, you can define relevant uncertainty as only that which is unmeasurable, but then you are saying something grammatically correct but meaningless.Eric Falkensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-23448890778873133342008-06-30T21:19:00.000-05:002008-06-30T21:19:00.000-05:00"I think this is foolhardy, because uncertainty is..."I think this is foolhardy, because uncertainty is correlated with volatility and factor loadings, and historically, earnings estimate variability, high volatility, or high beta stocks, all underperform, statistically"<BR/><BR/>If you've read Taleb, then you know you've committed a ludic fallacy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-86658484277412679282008-06-30T20:13:00.000-05:002008-06-30T20:13:00.000-05:00immunizing against bankruptcy probability is part ...immunizing against bankruptcy probability is part of maximizing one's geometric return. It's idiosyncratic risk that insurance companies can mitigate via the magic of diversification, and so its win-win. Plus, lotteries suggest people like positive skew, while insurance is paying to eliminate negative skew.Eric Falkensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-25318972753464258312008-06-30T20:08:00.000-05:002008-06-30T20:08:00.000-05:00while skew preference might be irrational from an ...while skew preference might be irrational from an expected value viewpoint, would you go without car/house insurance? i mean the odds are with the seller here too, right?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com