"Reasoning correctly from erroneous premises"

The quote above is from John Locke, but I found it second hand from Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan. Supposedly, it's Locke's definition of a madman.

In my opinion, this quote accurately describes the state of the art in academic finance and economics.

Although it may be hard to believe, the Nobel prize has been given out repeatedly to very smart people who are exemplars of the above quote.

As a result, the field of finance, economics and investing is populated with folks who seem to unquestioningly follow such teachings.

That's why most people are over-diversified and think risk equals volatility. The result is that most investors are under-protected from low probability, high impact, negative events and over-protected from low probability, high impact, positive events.

When a couple of Nobel laureates who exemplify the quote above followed their own advice, they lost almost all of their investors' money and nearly caused a temporary collapse in the world's financial system (if you think I'm exaggerating, read When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein).

Despite this paradigm shifting result, most market participants go right on assuming that erroneous premises can be followed with rigorously correct reasoning (and lots of higher math and Greek symbols).

Which reminds me of an apt definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" (Albert Einstein).

Nothing in this blog should be considered investment, financial, tax, or legal advice. The opinions, estimates and projections contained herein are subject to change without notice. Information throughout this blog has been obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, but such accuracy cannot be guaranteed.