YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Wilmott

lines on the record: 84
first: 2017-10-13
most recent: 2017-10-13
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

“I didn't realize that that was sort of important. If I knew that 25 years ago, would I have taken a different route? I really hope I wouldn't, because my route has always been to do whatever I think is fun. And that's why you look at my list of papers, there are all sorts of crazy things in my list of papers. So, this isn't really something I wish I knew I would have taken advantage of. I would like to think I knew it and I decided not to do it. It's Keynes again. I think it's Keynes. He says. It is better to fail conventionless than to succeed unconventionally. And I very much succeeded unconventionally.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just the two of us. They come up with a model, and usually it's a minor tweak to something, to some other model. And it's not necessarily a great model in any way, shape or form.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that I realized sort of halfway through that period would be that there's a lot of people have names attached to models, but usually those models, I don't know if I've offend any friends of mine here, but usually those models...”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it really upsets me when I see people who just good around children, but they've anyway. So that would be it. Just wait a while and have children first.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would say have children early because most people talk about oh they want to get their careers kick started and when they talk about their career they're always talking about I don't know being a lawyer or a quant or something it's not like they're curing cancer right it can wait it can wait”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And everything in between. Okay, well, I'm going to give you another point on the spectrum, which is have children early.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was, I think it was about 7p, right? It was all the money I had in my pocket, 7p. And I lost this bet. And it was a stupid, stupid, stupid bet. But I made the bet and I lost it. And clearly, you can see me crying now as we speak. It's had an impact on my entire life. And I think it's made me very risk averse.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I failed There's one, this may be a bit cheesy, it may not be strictly true, but it sounds quite good. There was a time... I must have been about 13, and there was a phase of we were all playing all the card games and gambling, you know, just for pennies, really pennies, because this is in the early 1970s. And I remember one time making a bet with Billy Jones.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The wrong people being attracted to it. It's a bit of both. And also education. I have my own educational program, the Certificate of Quantitative Finance. But most people go through masters in finance programs of financial engineering at university. And they're taught by people who don't necessarily understand how the markets work. Or you yourself have mentioned between us, we've mentioned the psychological side of things. Really have to understand human nature really almost before you start doing the mathematics. And that's something people completely miss. They think the models explain everything. And most of these programs people go on that taught the mathematics, but they're not taught when things break down, why things break down, et cetera. So education is pretty bad, I think.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you have to mention technology indeed. But that's happened everywhere, not just in quantitative finance, but also the number of people. The sheer quantities of people”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love them, but this is dire. It's like she's trying to be Akatha Christie, but it's three times as long as it should be. And you just don't, I finished that just because who done it? But by the time you get to the end, you realize anybody could have done it. And she just picked randomly. So it was rubbish. Avoid it.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's done this one called The Cuckoo's Calling, something like that. It's awful. I mean, really, I mean, really. I love Harry Potter books.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fascinating thing is of all the kind of, it's not exactly pulp fiction, but it's heading that direction. He's the only one that middle class people will admit to reading.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Critiques are a bit funny, and I'll alternate between maybe some classic and something easy. One thing I've discovered relatively recently is Lee Child. Now, you know Lee Child. Sure.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, this is disappointing. So if a book's more than, say, 400 pages, I probably won't even buy it. If it gets rave reviews on Amazon, if it's kind of classical, then I might avoid it because I know it's, you know,”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me other than the birth of my children was to realize that I could just stop reading a book”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tend to alternate between what you might call a classic book and then something just to recover from the classic book. And I'm now very impatient with books. Up until the age of 30, I would say that if I started a book, I had to finish it.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a fantastic book. But I tend to alternate fiction. I tend to alternate between the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy. He's fictional. Tristalla. Tristram Shandy.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you prefer fiction, that's one of my all-time favorite books is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman Stern, mid-18th century, I think it was. It's a totally well, I can't even begin to describe it, it's been described as an unfilmable book because it's so... I can't even begin to describe it. You should read it.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find that most of the nonfiction that I try to read is sort of obvious. And I think I should subscribe to one of these things where they condense a 500-page book into two pages. So history”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not following people is a need to better answer. I have this talent, which is if people say once thing, I say the exact opposite. And there comes a point where I don't really know what my own opinion is.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, exactly. But it was great fun. And it means that there are very few people, actually, I can only think of one other person in the world who's had such a breadth of mathematical experience as I have. That's why I can be very skeptical about the models, because I've seen so much of the mathematical world that other people haven't seen. And of course, when I started working in finance, I had to develop a whole new category even lower than the lowest or the low for people working mathematical finance.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No idea what they're on about or what the relevance, but really, really tough things. Tough. Then you move down the ranks and pure mathematicians who work in the abstract, then you've got applied mathematicians This group of people were pretty much the lowest of the low in the sense of the hierarchy. They used the maths to solve real problems.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's some self help book from the 80s, I think. Another one. My tutor and supervisor, John Ockendon, I was very lucky when I was studying mathematics to fall in with a group of people, mathematicians, who liked solving real world problems, physical problems, for example, using fluid mechanics, things like that Because most mathematicians are quite snobbish about their mathematics. And there's a hierarchy amongst mathematicians, which is at the very highest are the people who work on these very profound, deep problems, fermatological problems. Theoretical things that to the man in the street.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no. I'm with you, but not to karaoke. So I found that very helpful. If something frightens me, I think I could have done it now, it's frightening me, so I've got to do it. That's a good philosophy.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess the obvious one, my mother. My mother, she always encouraged me to, this explains the undercover thing, encouraged me to do things even though they might have frightened me.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are nuances here, indeed. And they had teams of lawyers. Actually, because it was a TV program rather than newspaper, the TV channels have a very strict rules. So, for example, we couldn't do, I ended up doing lots of stuff. But you're not allowed to do that for TV unless you've got grounds. So we did a lot of preparatory stuff. We got some sort of dodgy things, which fortunately never got recorded. And then I went in with the equipment on the pen in the pocket, the thing in the did you catch anybody? Yeah, yeah, yeah, somebody had to resign from the lived dem party. No, it was great fun. Coming to the House of Lords with hidden cameras, how do you smuggled hidden cameras into the government? Well, now you...”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And offer the money and try and see what would happen, how far I could go, all without entrapping them. And all often. Aren't you?”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two years ago, and a friend of mine who works for Channel 4 TV channel in the UK, he said he wanted to do some... Investigative undercover thing to find out were the political parties in the UK corrupt. If you offered the money, how far could you get? Now previously you would have someone pretend to be someone and they said they wanted to go a step further in this age of Google they want to have someone who was real a real business person who didn't mind making himself look stupid right and so he thought of me and so for six months i had to have meetings with all sorts of politicians of the main parties in the uk and offer”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's because I'm very bad at taking risks physically. I don't take any physical risks. I don't take many financial risks, but I'm happy to take any number of reputational risks you can throw at me. So, for example,”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, now you see. Well, I didn't have a boss. What I mean is I've never really had a boss. I've been running business since I was about nine years old, including the juggling.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is a black swan. Yes. Indeed, he is. It's ironic. At the same time, his book came out, the film The Black Swan came out. Unrelated completely”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always, always. He's a magnet. He'll be getting some text messages, which we'll tell about some of the astronomical sales of his books or some deal he's involved in. Or the markets are doing something crazy.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. No, he's a very interesting person. You have to be careful when you're around him because dramatic things always happen. Yeah.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in our experience, it was definitely the case that options tended to be overpriced. So in terms of a strategy, he would be selling vanilla options because they're overpriced. But the problem with selling options is when you have some extreme event, then you just blow up. So you need to make sure that you've got plenty of tail protection in case that happens, which is something that we specialized in.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“However, exactly, however, you calculate it's too large because that 1.2 quadrillion, even if you take off a zero or two, you're still left with something which is, and the world, the GDP of the world is something like 50 trillion. So it's the wrong way around. It's almost like finance is supposed to be in the service industry, but it's almost like people are making chairs and tables and whatever.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to tell because, yes, that is notional. So it could be that you might have that could be 1.2 million quadrillion in swaps. So it might just be 1% of that is at risk, which is still...”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About what quants do and risk managers in banks and hedge funds. And it was shortly after the crisis that we both had apparently independently thought we should write something which is we teamed up and it was a combination of Karl Marx and the Hippocratic Oath that we got our inspiration from.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he and I both had pretty much the same Thought at the same time about we've both been very skeptical about mathematical models. There's one subtle difference though and that is Emmanuel Derman hasn't his name attached to one which means he's kind of got a bit of skin in the game there which I haven't got. So I can be slightly more, you know. Than he can if you catch my drift. Anyway, but both of us are very sceptical about.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the book, we talk about having something like the FAA regulate planes. Something like that for banking and complex financial products. The analogy is that whenever you have a new plane, it has to be tested, et cetera, et cetera. Well, if you have a new financial product, it should be tested by some people. You can't have too many of this specific. You can't have too much concentration risk, just like you can't have too many planes landing at the same airport at the same time. So all sorts of analogies we draw between the airline business and the world of banking. And of course, it's an international thing. Planes take off one country, land another country. Well, how hard can it be to have an international perspective to banking regulation?”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's the start. Right The bonus is taken away, but lots of people get paid stupid money. I think CEOs of companies get paid stupid money”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do, again, going back to regulators, regulators, they don't understand. There's a story I could tell, but it involves, it's far too technical. But some practice that people do in banks called calibration. You don't need to know what it is. But it's something that... Superficially, it looks like it's a good mathematical model, but what it actually does is it hides risk. It makes it any model risk that's there gets hidden by this act of calibration. And when I've spoken to regulators, they don't really understand that what these people who are calibrating are doing is hiding risk. Instead, they go around telling banks, you must calibrate, which is like saying you must hide risk, which is really not what regulators are supposed to be doing.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you should do, of course, is just stick knives in the steering wheel. Get rid of all of that, and then you drive very, very safely, I suspect.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't know whether it's true or not, but I suddenly heard that actually the accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists have gone up for exactly the same. No, no, no, no, because people feel safe in their car and they've got all these cushions and whatnot, they're less likely to be injured, but people drive faster and so they kill more pedestrians.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you mentioned earlier, or hinted earlier, you don't make a lot of money usually from books unless you're JK Rowling or someone. So there came a point where it was... There are other things that were more profitable, more successful, and the books became more of a hobby or a publicity marketing tool, really.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, my mother and the fax machine. Yeah, yeah, worldwide. We had, we would give courses down in Wall Street and we would bring over from the UK boxes full of these books to sell to people on the courses. And you'd sell them all.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a few books out there, but this one was a different style of book. And then from then it turned into software companies, more publishing, etc. Were you selling them?”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, incredibly well. It was just unbelievable. Considering we did hardly any advertising, this is before Amazon, it did it incredibly well by word of mouth. And even before the book came out, people were talking about it. People were paying something like $250 for a hard copy that you had to cut and paste the pictures into the text. And I don't mean cut and paste like you do with a mouse. You mean physically. Scissors and glue. So they would get two piles. They get the without the images and then a separate pile with the images and they pay $250 to stick the two together.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I've always been like that. And so going back to the late 80s, I was doing some research with colleagues at university. And we thought why don't we give some courses and teach people in the city? And they just were phenomenally successful. Really? So we set up a business and then we turned into a book. And it was suggested, why don't we self-publish this book? So rather than just hand the book over to a publisher, we actually published it and printed it, etc. And my mother and my stepfather were in charge of sales. So my poor mother, we put in the advertising, we'd say 24 hour facts hotline.”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay. That's a given. But now the ukulele is replacing the recorder because really because it's easier, really 10 minutes. I should have brought it my ukulele. I'm sorry you didn't. That would have been great. Next time. Where do we get on to this? So business models, right?”
2017-10-13 · Masters in Business · Paul Wilmott Has Some Feelings About Quantitative Models · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source