So much I might say, mention, talk about. Would need way too much bandwidth and not enough time..
Long term capital.
Smart guys, veritable geniuses…..They took it on the chin.. and it almost triggered a global collapse in the 90s
Leverage..
a wonderful tool when you know what you’re doing..can crush anyonetoo when things go south….and it’s happened many times.
models.
We can hire and pay the brightest rocket scientist as quants out of western, others. We can have all the information….(HFT). We can have all the ratios, all the formulas, we can understand VAR, Capital at risk. Betas. If we are sophisticated enough, don’t have the capital, credit lines, ( mine were typically 800m with each of the sched As), if we don’t have ISDA, swaps…..there’s forwards, and futures. We can simply long call/short put…and on and on
. Plenty of places take it on the chin….
But there are always those who think they know better…..
Over my career I worked with some seriously smart people. Few of us. Play the markets with our own capital…why? We know better…..
I’m not trying to be snide or anything. It just is what it is…
Most investors hobbyist, don’t even understand volume, liquidity (Merton touched on it) how deep order books are...
Assuming you were around for 2008.we saw it coming in 2006. Started reducing our risk to MBS/ABCP….then it started in 2007..most of the world thinks it started in 2008…..hint hint…
And it sent shock waves around the world…
But hey Johnny Q……
Also not talked about enough, while many call it the financial crises. What it really was, became was a credit crunch……credit and liquidity dried up…Debt makes the world go round…
If one of our big As takes a hard enough hit.
nope, don’t want to be around. It could ( I think would) , wipe out just about everyone…including Johnny Q
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