http://gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm Are good fund managers simply lucky fund managers? About stocks, Nassim Taleb is sure of only one thing: that the probability of exceptional events—S11, say—is invariably underestimated.
This is a New Yorker piece, so as well as arguments you get pretty flourishes:
“He was always so conceptual about what he was doing,” says Howard Savery, who was Taleb's assistant at the French bank Indosuez in the nineteen-eighties. “He used to drive our floor trader (his name was Tim) crazy. Floor traders are used to precision: ‘Sell a hundred futures at eighty-seven.’ Nassim would pick up the phone and say, ‘Tim, sell some.’ And Tim would say, ‘How many?’ And he would say, ‘Oh, a social amount.’ It was like saying, ‘I don't have a number in mind, I just know I want to sell.’ ”
(I suppose a similar observation is behind index funds.) 17:21