Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of the monumental essay collection, the Incerto, an exploration of opacity, luck, uncertainty, and decision-making in a world we don't fully understand. Drawing from his background as a risk-taker and now a researcher, Taleb delves into the practical problems of probability and risk. His work, presented as a personal essay interwoven with autobiographical elements, stories, and philosophical reflections, offers a unique perspective on the complexities of modern life. He focuses on systems that can benefit from disorder and unpredictability.
New York Times bestselling author Nassim Taleb's landmark Incerto series - Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes - gathered together for the first time, in a beautifully designed box set.
Nassim Taleb's five landmark bestselling books have changed the way millions see the world and think about uncertainty, chance, volatility, and risk. They can be read individually but are also written to complement each other and actually comprise a single work: The Incerto. This boxed set is newly designed and offers readers one of the most significant intellectual projects of our time.
Traces the author's experiences as a mathematics wizard, author, inventor, hedge-fund manager, and card-counter who revealed casino-beating strategies, invented the first wearable computer, and launched a Wall Street revolution
Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? This book aims to change the way you think about business and the world. It also seeks to shatter the illusions of people around the world by teaching them how to recognize randomness.
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. In this title, the author shows that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Taleb tells us how to live in a world that is unpredictable and chaotic, and how to thrive during moments of disaster.
From the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost philosophers of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book on how some systems actually benefit from disorder. In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the "antifragile" is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, and proposing that things be built in an antifragile manner. Extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary, Antifragile provides a blueprint for how to behave-and thrive-in a world we don't understand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand. He who is not antifragile will perish. Why is the city state better than the nation state, why is debt bad for you, and why is almost everything modern bound to fail? The book covers innovation, health, biology, medicine, life decisions, politics, foreign policy, urban planning, war, personal finance, and economic systems. Throughout, the voice and recipes of the ancient wisdom from Phoenician, Roman, Greek, and Medieval sources are heard loud and clear.
Dynamic Hedging is an essential guide to managing derivatives risk, offering a practical approach for portfolios with nonlinear securities. It presents insights from the perspective of option market makers and arbitrage operators. Authored by an experienced trader with theoretical expertise, it adapts option theory to real-world scenarios, addressing the limitations of traditional mathematical models in capturing market exposure. Nassim Taleb explores both on-model and off-model derivatives risks, discussing critical concepts in accessible language. Key topics include the generalized option, which covers all convex payoff instruments, and trading techniques for exotic options like binary, barrier, multi-asset, and Asian options, while considering the complexities of actual distributions. The book examines market dynamics from a practitioner's viewpoint, addressing liquidity issues, portfolio insurance, volatility surfaces, and the shortcomings of value at risk methods. It introduces new risk detection tools, including higher moment analysis and nonparametric techniques, while emphasizing the path dependence of dynamically hedged options. Filled with practical tools, market anecdotes, and concise risk management rules, it also presents fundamental derivatives mathematics in intuitive terms, making it a valuable resource for practitioners.
Making Luck Work for You - Revised and Expanded Edition
A gripping tale of how even experts misread the role of chance - from the stock market to doctors' surgeries - "Dance With Chance" argues that we all fall foul of the 'The Illusion of Control', meaning that we underestimate the role of luck in our lives. The authors argue that by understanding how uncertainty operates, we can make palpable improvements to our health, wealth, happiness and careers.
From the critically acclaimed author of Fooled by Randomness, a book about the impact of improbable events on every aspect of life.
The phrase "skin in the game" is one we have often heard but have rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it's also an astonishingly complex worldview that applies to all aspects of our lives. Nassim Nicholas Taleb pulls on everything from Antaeus the Giant to Hammurabi to Donald Trump to Seneca to the ethics of disagreement to create a tapestry for understanding our world in a brand new way. Among his insights: For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing -- Ethical rules aren't universal -- Minorities, not majorities, run the world -- You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot -- Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find) -- True religion is commitment, not just faith
