Dear Rockstar,
We were all in the car going for our regular Saturday brunch today, when Mummy started at a banner we passed on the way up to Peak Lookout. There was a picture of a former investment banker both Mummy and Daddy have known casually in the market for some time- he would be running for public office, representing one of Hong Kong’s political parties.
Mummy does not claim to know much about Hong Kong politics, aside from the fact there are some interesting names like Long-Hair and Bow-Tie. (Then again, even before Mummy moved to Hong Kong, Mummy had already heard there are no people as interesting in their naming of things as Hongkies. Even Hongkie is a fun word to say. Hongkie, hongkie, hongkie. “Malaysian” doesn’t give one that much to work with.)
Anyway. While Mummy doesn’t know enough to comment on this former investment banker’s claim to a political career, Mummy and Daddy did hear some good things about him in the market and did like him all the times we dealt with him, however briefly, in the previous few years leading up to our revelation this morning. With all the horrible things going on in the world today, Mummy just wanted to write in somewhat ignorant bliss about how maybe, maybe, maybe this was a good man rolling up his sleeves and saying “What can I do?”
The laws of probability dictate there must be some good men out there. There is a game traders like to play, called Monte Carlo Simulation, to generate many, many possible outcomes for their trades. It is especially useful for knock-out options that can terminate suddenly if their knock-out is reached.
As surely as we know or believe there are Bad Men or monkeys in this world, we must surely believe there are a few Good Men too. (Mummy hopes it’s just that stories of Bad Men and monkeys sell more papers/ magazines.)
Mummy thinks if we played the Monte Carlo game to look for a few good men among the general population (this game being also able to take into account some who either quit and become farmers or well, expire like the options) we would all come out a bit more optimistic than how we have all been feeling after reading all the things in the papers. You see, grownups don’t know everything. It’s how phrases (and books) like Fooled By Randomness get coined – we see the proverbial elephants in clouds when we should have taken a step back and realize we are actually seeing clouds that our mind is telling us look like elephants.
Mummy always counts herself fortunate to have been thru 3 mergers in her banking career which blessed her with the opportunity to (surprise, surprise) meet some good men along with the bad ones. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed, but in Mummy’s case she didn’t even have to believe without seeing.
At a time when so many people believe demons are shouting down the better angels within us, it stands to reason in some cases the angels have at least a fair fight.
Ps: The author of Fooled By Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets organized his business and career back when he was an options trader around profiting from rare events – given the number of rare events (Mummy couldn’t resist a chance to introduce you to the term oxymoron, since you are currently find big, funny sounding words hilarious) going on in the markets today, Mummy thinks he is probably doing well in his trading (even if he doesn’t talk about it.)
The person who writes these books also calls himself an “occasional activist” against bankers, economists, social scientists and the like who might make society more fragile against high-impact, hard-to-predict things that happen (which he calls Black Swans).
Pps: You just woke from your nap and laughed at “Oxymoron,” like Mummy knew you would. Mummy is therefore working at getting as many big words into your vocabulary as she can, until you tire of funny-sounding big words.
