LOSING ONE HUNDRED THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS IN ONE DAY—UPDATE.

LOSING ONE HUNDRED THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS IN ONE DAY—UPDATE. Almost one month ago I posted on how the brilliant speculator Victor Niederhoffer had once lost one hundred thirty million dollars—all he had to invest and lose—in one day. In that post I linked to Malcolm Gladwell’s article on the long-running debate between Niederhoffer and Nassim Taleb (he, of the Black Swans) on the nature of risk and financial markets. Taleb describes Niederhoffer as “part chevalier, part scholar”, yet he disagrees with him profoundly. Niederhoffer has been one of the pioneers in using past data to predict price movements in financial markets. The current financial crisis seems to support Taleb’s claims that this can’t be done. How has Niederhoffer fared in this crisis? John Cassidy in the current New Yorker has an update. (Pages 10 to 12 tell what’s happened in the last three months).