Hidden in Plain Sight A working trader’s case for seeing relationships, constraints and process Next: Episode 1, What Bohm Saw A forester returns to a familiar stand and notices that the undergrowth, birds and soil no longer seem to respond...
Every Outlier Begins Somewhere The Foundations Series: Ten Essays on What Systematic Trend Following Rests On Watch the Episode SERIES OVERVIEW There is a moment in every serious trader’s education when the accumulation of information stops and understanding begins. The...
Three Books, One Question Markets. Systems. Reality. Why I wrote a trilogy, and why the three books are meant to be read as one. There is more order in the world than there should be. I noticed it first in...
The Map Is Useful Until the World Changes An eight-part journey through five centuries of uncertainty In December 1997, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work that had transformed the pricing of...
Built for What We Cannot Foresee What five centuries of managing uncertainty can teach us about surviving the next surprise A Venetian merchant commits capital to a ship that may never return. An eighteenth-century insurer studies mortality tables before making...
The Physicists Who Stopped Predicting How complexity science changed the questions we ask about markets, crises and survival In 2009, the financial system was still absorbing the shock of the previous year. Banks had failed, markets had frozen and governments...
The River That Was Not on the Map How weak mortgages became highly rated securities, and why the losses spread far beyond the homes on which the loans were made. United States, 2006. A mortgage lender approves a loan that...
The Genius and the Abyss How Long-Term Capital Management turned small pricing gaps into extraordinary returns, and discovered that being right about value is not the same as surviving the journey. Greenwich, Connecticut, 1994. John Meriwether is building a hedge...
The Formula That Ate the Market How Black, Scholes and Merton transformed option pricing, and what happened when an elegant model met a market that could move beneath it. Chicago, 1973. A new exchange opens for business with standardised options...
The Actuary and the Abyss How life assurance learned to measure uncertainty across a population, and what finance misunderstood when it carried the method into markets. London, 1762. A new society begins offering life assurance on a principle that now...
