Nicholas Nassim Taleb

If you are wondering how Nassim Taleb has been performing this year, not bad at all...

Of course there has been no shortage of Fat Tails this year.

Universa Investments LP, the Santa Monica, California-based firm where Taleb is an adviser, has about $1 billion in accounts managed to hedge clients against big moves in financial markets. Returns for the year through Oct. 10 ranged as high as 110 percent, according to investor documents. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 39 percent in the same period.

This guy has earned so much money in 87 and so much fame after wards, that I believe he cares about neither.

``I am very sad to be vindicated,'' Taleb said today in an interview in London. ``I don't care about the money. We're proud we protected our investors.''

And something that seems to have escaped most of the risk managers in the world.

``We refused to touch credit default swaps,'' Taleb said. ``It would be like buying insurance on the Titanic from someone on the Titanic.''

And he ends by taking a pot shot at my current profession... Too bad

``We would like society to lock up quantitative risk managers before they cause more damage,'' Taleb said.

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