Alan White and I spent the next two or three years working together on this. We developed what is known a stochastic volatility model. This is a model where the volatility as well as the underlying asset price moves around in an unpredictable way.
Briefly speaking, our conclusion is that stochastic volatility does not make a huge difference as far as the pricing is concerned if you get the average volatility right. It makes a big difference as far as hedging is concerned.
Once you get a reputation for emotional volatility, it can take years of model behavior to change how others see you.
At that point it certainly would be called abstract. That is to say, you had a model and there'd be one or two or three people there drawing the model but otherwise you had abstractions all around the room, even though the model was in front of you.
A margin of safety is achieved when securities are purchased at prices sufficiently below underlying value to allow for human error, bad luck, or extreme volatility in a complex, unpredictable and rapidly changing world.
Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value-that they have stopped playing the asset game. They're not buying because it's a company with certain attributes. They're buying because the price is rising. People are playing games not related to any concept at all of what the long-term value of the enterprise is. And they know it.
Because of that [Brexit], you're going to have slow growth and, unfortunately, while there may not be huge volatility, there will be volatility.
Outperforming the market with low volatility on a consistent basis is an impossibility. I outperformed the market for 30-odd years, but not with low volatility.
Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value.
It is an interesting fact about model selection that the evidence at hand can indicate that a model known to be false will be more predictively accurate than a model known to be true. This opens the door to a kind of instrumentalism.
Low-volatility funds, which tend to smooth out performance, have been especially popular since the financial crisis. The PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Fund is the oldest, begun in 2011.
He was wearing a plain white oxford unbuttoned over a T-shirt, but something about the way they fit made him look put together, like an Abercrombie model (well, like an Abercrombie model who had remembered to put on a shirt that morning).
I'm not a role model, nor have I ever tried to be a role model. The only thing about me as a role model is I've managed to stay here and be working and survive. For 40 years.
The capitalist model, the developed model, the consumer model which comes from the North, which it has forced on the world, is falling apart on Earth, and there is no planet nearby that we can emigrate to.
Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.
Asset managers have different approaches, and I don't wish to suggest there is only one way to run money. There are many ways one can attempt to reduce risk, improve performance, lower drawdowns and reduce volatility.
I was working in Camden Lock market from the age of 13 to 16, and people often suggested that I should be a model. I knew a girl working on a stall who was with Take Two model agency, so I decided to go along, and they took me on.