The true story of how a hedge fund, run by a team of super smart Nobel laureates, tried to out think the market and failed. It’s a remarkably instructive tale of how intelligence, when corrupted by arrogance and hubris, eventually leads to disasters.
Success, they say, leaves clues. So does failure. Unfortunately, the world focuses too much on learning only from successes. Success alone leaves the learning equation incomplete.
Identifying patterns is the key to drawing useful lessons from the past. Success patterns are just one part. The patterns left by failure are the remaining part of the puzzle. To succeed, one has to study both. Learning ‘what to do’ from success patterns and learning ‘what to avoid’ from failure patterns.
A person trying to get ahead in the world, with no will to study the failures, is akin to the proverbial one-legged man who is trying to score points in an ass-kicking contest.
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