Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Making money out of disaster?

The Contrarian Investors' Journal concludes its series on exploiting the possibility of a crash, by suggesting a series of short-term bets on the drop. It's a gamble, of course, but appeals to the Black Swan types who look for an "asymmetric outcome" - a disproportionately large payoff if the unlikely event happens. In other words, if the event has 100-1 odds against occurring, but the bet is offering 500-1, it seems worth taking - if you're a gambler.

But there's another risk involved: the "bookie" may not be willing, or able, to pay out. A prudent investor should consider counterparty risk.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Unfortunately, because of a plague of spam comments, you need to be a "registered user", otherwise your observations will be buried in a torrent of multilingual nonsense. Please do comment!

Say what you please, so long as it's phrased politely and is not libellous or legally proscribed. Fact, reason and wit are keenly welcomed.