Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Why Correlation is Unreliable

At the 2022 Greenwich Economic Forum-Miami, Black Swan author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why correlation is unreliable at a due diligence tool. Coming as it does during on ongoing pandemic and in the middle of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Taleb also discusses Wars and Pandemics and puts them into their proper risk buckets.

[jonathanbatturs]

This guy is tops, I have followed his writing ever since I realized he exposed who really pushed to repeal Glass-Steagall, Robert Rubin was a snake among snakes, He took advantage of a young President who didnt really understands Major League economics, I commend you Mr. Taleb for being on top of that story !

[flaviulus]

Nassim truly doesn't give much of a hoot about following the crowd, telling a group that has benefitted from the historical decline in interest rates to get in cash or not invest is ballsy af 😂

[MrRufusjax]

I love Nassim. Super smart guy. His books have made me view the world differently.

[HemantKChitale]

"It requires a lot of gullibility to believe in these methods" !!!

[jagatdave]

Haha...coin base is sponsoring nassim taleb...what a mockery of advertising. And how painful it is to see all this...

[philipwallstedt]

Inflation favors debtors (I owe same money on my house, but houses increases in value) and deflation favors creditors (guy making payments to me has to pay original price, but value of asset has reduced). Is there anything more to Taleb's point than this?

[TraderOmar]

Can't explain how unclear and at the sametime logical he talks

[LPJCP]

My, if ever there was someone who thinks he's the smartest in the room, this chap is the one. And, how much money does he manage? Not much, from the available information we have. Now, there's a correlation for you.

[BlantonDelbert]

I like and appreciate much of what Mr. Taleb writes-and-says; however, I once made a critical remark on Twitter about one of his Tweets, and Mr. Taleb blocked me!! Ha!! Thus, in this way, he is just like other public intellectuals who automatically reject any criticism. Delbert Blanton, Kokomo, Indiana.

[rednarok]

The sound quality was really bad. Sounded like he is speaking from a 1920 old radio. No noise reduction at all neither sound sufficient balance.

[lashlarue]

This guy Taleb is a wise sage. He literally called out the risk of a pandemic back in his Black Swan book.

[freiheit]

Great talk! Inflation is always monetary and leads to a debasement of the currency which is the broadly used unit of account. So Inflation is always a rise in ALL assets since the pricing function is disrupted to the downside. When there is "inflation" and only some assets rise in price (with well-known non-monetary causal reasons like shut-downs, wars, fires in Taiwan, trucker protests in Canada, and so on) then this is a price increase caused by supply shocks (not by money printing).

And on top, there is the FED setting interest rates for their government "money", and financing government checks by debt, which is not the same as the globally used credit-money that is used in world-trade. The US-Governments and FEDs actions inflate the price of US-Markets. So all in all you have multiple phenomena. In simple terms: there are asset bubbles in housing, stonks, crypto (not inflation), there are price increases due to reptiloids playing war and pandemic (which is clearly not inflation because it is not caused by money printing)....

and then there is the real money aka credit economy in the shadows of the offshore market (much bigger than the FED and all countries together) where we simply don´t know what it is going on. No one knows how much "dollar" aka dollar-denominated credit is out there. No one knows if global credit is collapsing (deflation). What we know is that the world economy is for sure not booming because families are not booming. People in China, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, and so on stopped reproducing, they show higher suicide rates than ever in human history.

So it is much more complex than the simple "money printer goes brrr" narrative. As Taleb said, CASH is the asset to hold, because when asset bubbles collapse, the whole world runs into dollar-denominated assets. Dollar cash is not the same as the US-Dollar banknotes printed by the US-treasury. Both are assets denominated in USD. That's the thing why most people don't understand this "paradox". Most dollars out there (in the offshore aka euro-dollar market) are not US-Dollar. And cash is not what the layman calls "cash". Cash is an inflation hedged basket "numeraire" and has nothing to do with your paper money and simplified world view. But when you really think your paper house is worth 2 Million dollars (because of the almighty FED) while no person is able to pay rents justifying that price, then no one can help you. Go buy more stonks, Bitcoin, and houses.

[marcelotrombini]

Uma pergunta para todos:
Utilizando a estratégia barbell de Nassim Taleb, no quê vocês investiriam os 90% do lado super conservador e os 10% do lado super agressivo?
Obrigado

[leswhynin]

I'm generally a Nassim fan but 15:35 on where he says being in cash during inflation... makes zero sense to me

[BlueBeeMCMLXI]

"Proper risk buckets" say the notes to this video. That's awfully certain language for reality... when will this proper bucket be known and available? LOL!

[Gazto]

10:40, biology and evolution don't work with improvement as a canon for progress, they just "are", and some organisms that were fit for certain environments little by little become more adapted to other environments, in no place in nature there is room for the concept of improvement, it is a human concept based on culture and personal principles.

[BlueSoulTiger]

1:51 Yes, but you didn't just "jump straight into it" did you?

[oppenheim]

Think of nations as assets (their people, universities, parks, buildings, land, resources, etc.) and that qualify assets tend to maintain value over time. Therefore, with worldwide low interest rates benefiting assets and the wealthy as he posits, then the US, the wealthiest nation ever, should benefit the most under current threats. Thus, quality assets, in general, within the US should do fine over time.

[johnhammer]

15:35 How does cash protect from inflation ? That was the question here

[MohammedAli-xves]

Value investors are the same, in times of uncertainty, get out, stick with cash.

I just have a bad feeling about crypto. Unless it’s government backed in some way, it may just be a sinister tool to offset the creation of money (M1 to M3 exponential) by way of global busts (incredible losses).