What Finance Has Taught Me: The Sometimes Disastrous Limitations of Quant Financial Models and Related Randomness of Expert Opinion

Run Time: 51.08 minutes Quant legend Ed Thorp shares several unifying concepts that have helped his thinking over the last five decades in finance:

- “The map is not the territory” highlights the repeatedly and sometimes disastrous overlooked limitations of quantitative financial models.
- The related randomness, even folly, of much expert opinion and the difference between “hedgehogs” and foxes” tells us that if it’s important, verify the facts and then think for yourself in forming your own opinion.
- When the invisible hand becomes a visible foot in the mouth, the tragedy of the commons, and the proper pricing of externalities are repeatedly overlooked. 

Critical for long term investors:

The secular pricing of securities, even the fate of empire, is largely determined by the aggregate behavior of the politically connected rich, those among the 0.01% who use government to extract excess wealth (rents) from everyone else.

This video, one of six from the Wiley WILMOTT Summit on Risk and Quantitative Modeling in Finance, held on the 11th December 2012 at Columbia University, New York feature the presentations from thought leaders and industry experts aiming to draw together some of the lessons of the last decade in order to restate the discipline’s fundamental role in driving the future success of the global market economy.

This is the time to define what quantitative finance really means beyond the fallout of the global financial crisis and to identify the technology and techniques that will power innovation and growth.

Videos in this series include:

Paul Wilmott - Recent Advances in Stupid Ideas in Quant Finance
Kent Osband - Fooled by Rational Turbulence 
Aaron Brown - And The Cows That Were Ugly and Gaunt Ate Up The Seven Sleek, Fat Cows
Patrick S. Hagan - On Beyond Black: Volatility Surfaces and Dark Noise
Edward O. Thorp - What Finance Has Taught Me
Chaired by Jack Schwager - Wiley Wilmott Summit Debate, Is Finance the sickness or the cure? Joined by Paul Wilmott, Kent Osband, Aaron Brown and Patrick S. Hagan