flâneur

Founders: #93 Ed Thorp (A Man for All Markets)

podscripts.co · 13,141 words · saved by 1 readers

What I learned from reading A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Edward Thorp. ---- [0:01] Ed Thorp’s memoir reads like a thriller—mixing wearable computers that would have made James Bond proud, shady characters, great scientists, and poisoning attempts. The book reveals a thorough, rigorous, methodical person in search of life, knowledge, financial security, and, not least of all, fun. Thorp is also known to be a generous man, intellectually speaking, eager to share his discoveries with random strangers. [1:23] Ed Thorp is the first modern mathematician who successfully used quantitative methods for risk taking—and most certainly the first mathematician who met financial success doing it. [3:19] Ed was initially an academic, but he favored learning by doing, with his skin in the game. When you reincarnate as practitioner, you want the mountain to give birth to the simplest possible strategy, and one that has the smallest number of side effects, the minimum possible hidden complications. [4:33] As Warren Buffet said: “In order to succeed you must first survive.” You need to avoid ruin. At all costs. [6:48] It is vastly less

[00:00:00] Ed Thorpe's memoir reads like a thriller, mixing wearable computers that would have made James Bond proud, shady characters, great scientists, and poisoning attempts. The book reveals a thorough, rigorous, methodical person in search of life, knowledge, financial security, and not least of all, fun. Thorpe is a generous man, eager to share his discoveries with random strangers. Something you'd hope to find in scientists, but usually don't. Yet he is humble. He might qualify as the only humble trader on planet Earth. [00:00:36] So unless the reader can reinterpret what's between…

related reading