Economic Rocket Ballistics

[Richard Romeo]

I'm reading an interesting book on the rise and fall of Long Term Capital 
Management, called "When Genius Failed". Essentially, a huge hedge fund 
almost brought the whole financial system down because of its extensive use 
of high-level trades using derivatives and arbitrage. LTMC relied upon 
mathematical models to track price flux on many types of things, bonds, 
mortgages, and eventually even equities. Wall Street (like those rocket 
scientists we all know and love) came to  believe in these academics to come 
up with mathematical models to explain how markets work, kinda like how 
objects like cannonballs move in flight.  Another type of pornography of 
flight, I suppose.

Oh, the author's agent is Melanie Jackson.  ;)

Rich



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