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Showing posts from April, 2012

Cliff Asness of AQR: Bubble Logic

I'm reading a passage from Scott Patterson's book, The Quants , that looks back on the .com bubble. Let me share a few brief quotes from this section with you here. Backdrop: "A few months before the dot-com IPO frenzy began, LTCM had collapsed. Greenspan and the Fed swept in organizing a bailout. Greenspan also slashed interest rates...the easy money added fuel to the smoldering internet fires...pushing the tech-laden Nasdaq to all-time highs on an almost daily basis."  The .com boom proved disastrous for Cliff Asness' hedge fund, AQR, which invested in value stocks while "betting against companies his models deemed expensive".  After agonizing over the fund's poor performance and the perceived boundless stupidity of market participants, Asness finally came to a realization about markets and crowds: investor irrationality does not stay within expected, "just right" modeled bounds.  Surveying the scene near the peak of the internet

Arthur C. Clarke predicts the internet and PCs

Arthur C. Clarke forecasts the future of 2001 , a time when home computers and interconnectivity with others through technology are commonplace (via Eddie Markets ).

Bernard Baruch: private speculator & public life

Bernard Baruch with Winston Churchill (left) and Dwight Eisenhower (right) in 1953 (via loc.gov ). Related posts : 1. Speculation drives human progress .  2. Bernard Baruch: Why I Still Believe in the Future .

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion.

"Just one word. Are you listening? Apps ."

Early retirement? Cary Grant, Holiday (1938)

"It's always been my idea to make a few thousands early in the game, and then quit for as long as they last..." - Cary Grant , Holiday (1938).