YouSaid · the spoken record

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

lines on the record: 127
first: 2023-09-07
most recent: 2023-09-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Banks must be profitable enterprises. They make money off if you're the float, the money you have left there, the check you didn't cash, right, or stuff like that, they make tons of money. And guess what? They blow up on risk that bring them a tiny amount of money. You see, it's selling that option that explodes every 10 years by saying, oh, no, we're in different environments. It'll never happen. So sitting on dynamite. So that tiny, tiny, tiny tail option is what cost the banking system. They lost more money than ever made in history banking in 1982. Money center banks, that is, and did the same 2007 on a business that's usually profitable except for that tail event. So I'm saying that if you just remove that, banks would do well. It's the same thing in society. If you figure out how to remove that tail risk, sometimes not complicated.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. He's the one who started it, and they were doing it secretly before it became public so people wouldn't take antipyratic drugs before landing. So the whole idea is that you have to find fixes and they're not complicated. And one analogy I'm going to give is the banking system is that the banking system”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do we have to learn from history how people handle that? They cut it in the egg. That's it And it's easier to track people at the border. You don't need to have quarantine. You can just test at the border. We didn't test the United States at the border until a year and one month into the pandemic. I don't understand. You have lockdowns, but you don't have lockouts. I mean, just test out a border. Just test people at a border. That would probably reduce the fellow from Singapore was testing at the border. He said the way to control it is by knowing, especially testing people without their being aware of it. And they started the first thing where they detect temperature before anybody knew about these temperature things secretly at Singapore. So it was agreed.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They had a lot of traffic and it went through what they call Corinthian spots. So you would go into a sort of hospital that has quarantine and it's seven days one way and nine days the other day and they would implement that the minute they smelled anything, right? And they had rules. If you come from India, more days, the Ottomans had these rules, didn't come from the Ottoman. It's a long experience dealing with pandemics and how you stem them by stopping them at the border. These things were called lazaretos and towns that did not have Lazaretos, Venice, of course, their maritime power. They had lazarettos. They did very well. But Marseille, France... Was decimated because they didn't have Lazaritos.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you boss panic, panic now black and finance and anything. You get out now when it was easy, for example, to limit the flights out of Wuhan or you didn't have to do lockdowns. You could do lockouts. I mean, and there were methods used by the Ottomans. The Ottomans, yeah, to install the Ottomans and the Austrians had the world was separate.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And particularly a fellow who was probably one of the smartest people I've ever met, who's a head of civil service in Singapore at the time, and then retired later. And we were all obsessed with a great pandemic that would come. And we thought it was going to be Ebola. So you had to worry about pandemics. And later on, I wrote a scientific paper, a scholarly paper on pandemics. That I didn't really finish. And when pandemic struck, we put it in nature physics. And when counter nature physics is a very prestigious, as you can guess, scholarly publication, and it silenced a lot of the epidemiologists who were like nitpicking, similar to economists, like nitpicking when you have what I call extreme properties.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the financial world, and the same thing in the physical world. You see, the plague, the great plague, took something like 300 some years to go from Constantinople to northern England, 300 some years. Today it's just a weekend for the whole thing, so the entire planet. And Justinian's Blake could not come to the Americas. There were no Air France or no ships at the time. And now visibly, so what I'm saying is that we are in a different environment. Culturally, things can spread. You have the Google effect. The same thing should apply to pandemics. So this is why we were working on Yanier and I and other people on pandemics.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And know what class of events You should be prepared again. So, in other words, we should Coming from, and pandemics for me was something I was working on since 2007. I even discussed it in the Black Swan. The pandemic, what you have to worry about is a pandemic before financial meltdown because of connectivity. We no longer, like in the 1800s, where you could have a crisis here and not there. Everything's so connected.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I met you for 15, 16 years, and thanked that shortcast. And it was very good that he wrote that book for a reason, to put some story and narrative around the idea precaution and tailor risk for society in general. And also because of fact-checking that document makes a lot of these stories, legends of this has happened, this didn't happen. It was a perfect fair fact because fact-checking, reflecting, audited results and stuff like that was fact-checked. So sort of fact-checking the importance of tail hedging for society. And that's to me is greater than that details. It's like having finally a document, someone who bothered to look at the details and went through a rigorous”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in a way, I started liking your idea of hacking. And until I discovered over time that basically all the things I've enjoyed doing were the things I reversed hacked. So in other words, take a long road. Like right now, last week at the 17 hours of cycling. So that's a long road. That's not a short road. Whereas when we met, I was looking for shortcuts. The university had no shortcuts. And he takes no shortcuts. So I may have known you now for 15 years.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“German market, not the US market, the thing exploded, and they were out of business in insurance. So a lot of our competitors tried to mitigate the strategy. We were absolutely fierce. That's the other thing is that you notice with players in Universal. If you met Mark, you don't understand it. There's no question. That's what we're going to do. We're not going to mitigate, no correlation, nothing. All we do is artichokes. We don't do nothing. That's it. We don't cook anything else. No, we want administration. We will not add many to the article. And in a way, I told you, the log road, not the hack, we didn't hack the trade. The long road is the best.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were diverted into other funds who were actually mitigating the strategy by instead of buy puts on the S&P 500s, you buy puts that are cheaper in some other commodity and hope that they would correlate. So there was dependence on correlation. So I know someone who actually went bust. He said called overriding the strategy, buy and puts on the S&P 500 and selling puts on the German index to collect more cash out of the trade. So that way you say, oh, have more stay in power. And his investors were proud. They'll guess what happened.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There The first one, okay, the first flaw, and this I noticed in our days, a lot of clients that had initially wanted to start empirica.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That we are one track ponies, and whether in my work intellectually was worried about tail risk or whether the implementation of Universa, of their ideas, of Marx's ideas, one thing, just one single thing. So when you do one thing professionally, he develops an edge.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know how much to put Honda, too much, not too much. You see, if you do just what trade, and then people come to the university, I say, no, that's what we do. Why don't you do this for us? No. It's like you're making maseratis, right? And someone comes to you and say, hey, once you make trucks, we don't do trucks. When we make bicycle, we don't do bicycle. All we make is one single item. That's it, one single size. And that is the main criticism one trick point ease. And that's what we're proud about.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes people only look at the stock performance, and some people only have the option performance and tell them, no, it's inseparable. You see, this is called the delta, right? So that was how they managed. You have to understand that we are one trick or me intellectually, I'm a one trick pony, I think of nothing else but tailor risk. Everything's packaged around Taylor Risk that I do intellectually. But Universal is a one-trick pony. Only does one trade. So if you do only one trade And for a couple of decades, believe me, you know the tricks.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“larger exposure to the market than they would otherwise. And also there's a cocktail of other strategies. that definitely didn't fare well because they entail diversification away from stocks. So this one allows you to have stocks. So it's very weird because Mark is always bearish on the market, but he provides people a product that couples very well with a very long stock position. That was, what was the secret? Given that it's packaged that Investors Some drawdown, not too much on the insurance. You see, while looking at insurance versus insurance premium. Exactly versus the insured. I mean, hey, this is my differential P&L. And it's the same thing when I started trading options, have an option hedged by stock.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The genius of Universal That they manage to package a product as insurance that allows the investors to increase their exposure to the market. So, think about it the strategy in and of itself is positive, a huge return. What's more interesting is that it was hedging something that went up. What does the stock market do since then? I mean, it went up like 32-fold. No, no, no in total since 2007.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To not be harmed by silent risk. That's the idea. The first thing is don't be harmed by it. But of course, you know, given that when you study televisions, you say these people are ignoring these risks, therefore their risk in the system that people generate and don't see, hence, you can trade on it.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing I would say before he launches that the point is not Tibetan televisions. The whole idea of the black swan, everything I've been telling everyone, every person I meet.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then last time in the time before Romania, we met his funeral when he came in and paid for the bill surreptitiously. And I Want to retaliate tonight?”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we had all the eggs for some reason. I mean, they were worried about us. How could people, human beings, eat so many eggs? So that was my first. Physical and carbon corresponding before and became friends. And there's an interesting scene that I have in my mind when Lehman Brothers went bust. Basically, after our, you know, would we reconnect and then you follow that trade? And he wrote about it actually about the quality of the trade and the promise of the trade that we're betting on tail events before the Levin crisis. And on that day, when the day Lehman went bust, I was on a plane in Communocado. I land and the first thing I got was an SMS from him because I was meeting you for dinner. And the second thing I got is news that Lehman went bust. So from news from Mark, Lehman went bust. It was...”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That time, and the first time we met, we corresponded and said, Oh, this guy has very interesting ideas about hacking things. We went to a restaurant, I think, on Madison Avenue, and we ate every single egg they had in the store.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Live for the battle. Okay, so that was what happened. And of course, the rest is history, as you know. But let me mention one thing that probably your listeners and viewers don't know, that of all the people that have been on his podcast, I bet you I'm the first one you've met.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He did nothing else, and he was an interested. I mean, he did other things, of course, on the side of destruction. So he was a benefit. So I wanted to transit out. So I said, okay, it'll take some time off to finish the Black Swan, which I couldn't finish when I was training. Actually, I started before Food by Randomness incidentally. I started a black swan and then I said, okay, I'm going to talk about randomness. So I got diverted into foot by randomness. And then I finished the Black Swan. It was almost a 20 year thing. And I realized that I'd like to be a scholar. It's well, who trades once in a while with a sense of, it was like a military person who has an honorary discharge to do other things and of course leaves the battleship to those who”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew it would never stop and I still in my late 30s, early 40s, I had time. Who really do something else. And I realized the following that when I had a position, I could be involved in trading, but I didn't want to be the one flying the plane as a passenger or as a co-pilot, maybe, at a time. I said, okay, Mark is much more capable of running this because he loves doing it. And I like the concepts and the ideas, but didn't like. Follow positions, and because it was the minute I would be involved in the trade. Would inhabit me. So I felt like it was there's something in my brain that was slowed down by the fact that I had to worry about something else out of a sense of responsibility. So Mark didn't have that. So Mark had compartment.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Called the Black Swan, which explained the transition from The author was trying to transit. I kept begging him and tell him, no, I don't want to be known as a hedge fund manager. I don't want to be known as a finance year I've done. Reframe it so I don't want to talk to you, except if you talk about my ideas. He said, Okay, we're going to talk about your ideas. This is why, I mean, I said, okay, on my grave, I don't want to be known as a traitor, but as a scholar. And I remember he's bringing back a portion of life, but it was at the right time because he contacted us right before the explosion of 2007. And there's a weird connection right there that I'll mention later to you, right?”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT