Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Black-Scholes = Black Hole

My math is far too weak to follow Black-Scholes, but it's been the standard paradigm for pricing of exotic financial instruments for a quarter of a century.

No longer
.

Ever since I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 'Black Swan', and bought/read his 'Fooled by Randomness' I've had this intuition that there was a big soft spot right underneath the main pillar of the financial establishment. The article notes that, in supplying a plausible mechanism for pricing exotica, Black-Scholes also prompted a massive surge in their supply. Now, we know it was all based on a mirage.....

The fool's bandag-ed finger goes wabbling back to the fire.

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