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Tue Jun 3 22:38:01 2008 Fooled By Randomness A book report. |
I recently read (well, re-read) Nassim Taleb's
Fooled By Randomness, subtitled "The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets."
It is an excellent book, well-worth reading for two reasons:
- It is written in a fairly direct style. Mr. Taleb
is clearly opinionated and felt he should tell his story,
regardless of what publishers thought.
- It makes a strong case for how much randomness influences
what we do and perceive, and how little we notice it.
Randomness definitely affects everyone. But Mr. Taleb has worked for over a
decade as an options trader, subject to the daily fluctuations of multiple
global markets. And he has seen traders and companies rise and fall based on
randomness. Randomness was very explicit there (although not obvious to
everyone), and once he saw its pervasive effects in that industry, he was able
to generalize the concept to other areas.
I had two main take-aways.
The first take-away was a deeper appreciation for the
Survivor Bias, which occurs when a supposedly statistical study fails to include all data
properly. In finance, it is common to compare only long-lived mutual funds (for example) and
ignore all of those that have failed. It is very sobering to realize that if
you put a bunch of people and funds into place, had them guess randomly about
investments and tracked them over time, you would see many fail and a few
survive for a long time (by chance)--exactly the same situation we observe
today! Only we don't say long-lived or successful funds are random
survivors. We say the fund managers are geniuses, and expect them to repeat
their successes. (Again, soberingly, most don't).
The second take-away was people's poor appreciation for probability. Even in
his world of trading, where people with scientific and mathematics backgrounds
were working on algorithmic strategies, there was a disconnect with simple
statistics. Even basic concepts such as
Expected Value were often missed!
Nassim's main point was that a person well-versed in basic probability, and
aware of the large role of randomness in the world, could avoid many common
mistakes and maybe even make money off other peoples' ignorance. Certainly
that's true in his profession.
It isn't a perfect book. He extended some of the survivorship bias to good
people management. I think enough of us have had good (and bad!) managers to
know that good managers often aren't survivors--they are actually good
managers. I see Nassim's point that sometimes managers get lucky (due to
happening to manage an organization during a moment of critical success or
riding a market bubble, etc.), so a few "star" CEOs may actually be just
average managers who happened to be at the right place at the right time. But
some of his arguments here felt a bit jaded.
Still, an overall enjoyable read, and a good reminder while the markets are in
their current volatile state.
I don't know how Mr. Taleb did in the subprime mortgage crash, but given his
stated preference for targeting large crashes, I suspect he did quite well.
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Wed May 28 23:05:03 2008 Seizing Up Explained What seizing up really means, and why you should be afraid... |
There was a good story in today's
Wall Street Journal. It covered the last few days of
Bear Stearns' life as a solvent company. It was fascinating reading!
One thing really struck home: the speed of the collapse. Once investors
realized Bear Stearns had problems, they rushed to pull out their investments,
and banks who were lending them money notified them that their loans wouldn't
be renewed.
The result?
As you'd expect, Bear Stearns ran out of money fast. They couldn't raise the capital
necessary to return investor funds, especially since banks were refusing to
lend them any more. All they could do was sell their existing securities at
fire sale prices to try to pay back investors.
This is the classic description of
bank runs, even though this was a investment bank rather than a commercial bank.
I've written before about the rampant use of the term "seizing up" to describe
the post-subprime collapse (see
Carpe Seize! or
Seizing Up). I was curious, what can they (reporters and financial pontificators) mean
by "seizing up?"
The WSJ Bear Stearns story is pretty clear: the entire investment bank
community was primed to collapse. Investors everywhere would realize "hey,
these investments aren't safe at all!", and they would all try to pull their
money out at once. Investment firms would not be able to return the funds,
because they don't have any. All of your invested money has been used as
collateral on
loans for the investment banks to make other, bigger investments in an attempt
to make high returns.
If everyone demanded their money, the firms would be forced to terminate their
positions, probably at a loss, in order to close out the loans and return
funds. Because all of the investment banks would be selling their securities
at the same time
in order to raise cash to return to investors, prices would plummet, and the
result would be that most of the firms would go under (massive losses
amplified by leverage) and most investors would get back only a fraction of
what they'd put in.
That's what I think "seizing up" means. The house of cards would really
collapse.
Rather than let that happen, the
Federal Reserve moved to keep investment banks solvent. In an unprecendented move, the Fed
helped broker a deal whereby
JP Morgan would buy Bear Stearns at a huge discount, with the Fed promising to cover
all Bear Stearns losses with taxpayer money (see the stories at
MSNBC and
CNN).
I think that is a bad idea. The Fed is trying to cover investment banks with
the same guarantees as commercial banks. But that is bound to fail.
Why is the Fed's move to protect investment banks ultimately doomed to
fail?
Because investment banks are competing for the highest rate of returns. The
way to achieve high returns is to take on high risk. And that means taking
leveraged positions in the market. By attempting to guarantee investment
banks, the Fed is putting billions of taxpayer dollars at risk.
I say
billions, because although the Fed is putting trillions of taxpayer dollars at
risk, that is only on paper. A bad crash would bankrupt the country well
before we reached the trillion-dollar mark.
So what should the Fed do?
The Fed should continue to cover and regulate commercial banks. Also, it
should only protect commercial banks. Since the 80's, the Fed has let
commercial banks take on investment bank responsibilities, especially with the
Gramm-Leach-Billey Act, which I'd never heard of before but now looks very suspicious.
Once the Fed is back to protecting commercial banks, it should be clear with
investors: "If you choose to invest with investment banks, be aware that your
deposits are NOT insured, and you could lose all your money."
Right now, even a conservative investor is a fool not to invest in risky investment banks.
There is no downside. If the bank does well, you make money. If the bank
collapses catastrophically, the government will bail you out. So why not take
a lot of risk, and let other taxpayers bail you out if needed?
If the Fed persists in attempting to cover the risky behavior of investment
banks, we'll be fine until the next market crash. Then the result will either be collapse of the economy (unlikely) or the
currency (very likely). The currency will collapse as the government realizes
it needs to print more money to cover all of the investment bank losses.
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Mon May 19 23:06:50 2008 More Bad Gas Congress and the President pass a bad law. |
Today President Bush
signed into law a dubious bill submitted by the US Congress. It was another attempt
to reduce oil prices, and it may have serious consequences. (See
High Oil and Gas Prices for another even less effective Congressional attempt).
Senators had noticed that the
US Strategic Petroleum Reserves were buying 70 thousand barrels of oil a day. Their thinking was that
stopping these purchases would help reduce demand and therefore prices.
Don't get me wrong, I hate high gas prices. I just filled my tank today and I
was stunned (prices here are now well over $4 per gallon). I'd like prices to
come down.
However, the Congressional bill was ill-advised for two reasons:
First, the strategic reserve purchases are a miniscule part of total
demand. The United States consumes over 20 million barrels of oil a day. The
70 thousand barrels amounts to 0.3% of total US demand. Not 3%, 0.3%.
Furthermore, oil is a global commodity, so the impact has to be judged
relative to global consumption. The world consumes over 80 million barrels of
oil a day.
So the US Congress has removed less than 0.1% of global demand for oil. It is
unlikely that the global markets will even notice that tiny drop in demand.
But let's say the markets do notice, and the price drops by 0.3% (I've
generously multiplied the demand drop by 3 since oil is after all an
inelastic supply).
In the best, most generous case, Congress may have reduced gas prices by one
penny. Hey, maybe that's worth it, right?
Wrong. That brings me to my
Second reason that the Congressional bill was ill-advised: Congress is
assuming that we are in a temporary period of high oil prices. Halting
strategic purchases would help ameliorate the high prices, and then the
purchases can resume when prices come down a bit. (The bill--now a
law--stipulates that purchases can resume again at the end of 2008).
However, there is a very good chance that prices will keep rising for the
foreseeable future. Why would prices drop, after all? Demand won't drop very
quickly, since a demand drop will require that large numbers of American
consumers and industries
replace their inefficient cars and factories with more efficient models, which
will take a long time. (Based on the 1970's oil shock, it takes several years for
demand to come down).
But even if US demand is dropping, other world demand (China, India, others) continues to accelerate. A
drop in US demand would help a lot, but this isn't the 1970's anymore. There
are a lot more industrialized
countries to buy that oil.
And oil production is peaking.
Russian oil production peaked in 2007, leaving only OPEC countries to keep up with production. However, only Saudi
Arabia has significant reserves, and they are
running out of easy-to-extract oil.
Oil industry observers know all this. They expect prices to rise, not
decline. Goldman Sachs recently predicted that oil prices would reach
over $140 per barrel in 2008, up from close to $130 today. And they predict prices in the $150-200 range
in the longer-term (6 months to 2 years). That would mean gas prices well
over $6 per gallon.
So what did Congress actually accomplish? We've saved a penny per gallon now
(maybe), and then the strategic reserve will have to start buying again later
when gas is even more expensive. And if you believe that stopping the
purchases helped prices now, then you have to agree that starting the
purchases later will hurt prices then.
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