Amazon.com: Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street: Books: William Poundstone
An entertaining book, in that it ties together organized crime, gambling, academic economics, information theory, and hedge funds. The writing felt a little light, though: there was a lot of name-dropping, with the presumed expectation that the reader has heard of everyone before. (Interestingly, the book mentions that "John Koonmen" managed to lose 1.4 billion dollars in his overleveraged hedge fund. I believe that I lived in the same dorm as John when I was in college.)
I still don't understand the underlying controversy in academia over Kelly's criterion. It seems like a sensible betting strategy, but extremely dangerous to use in modeling one's retirement savings. As one nears retirement, the goal should be to preserve capital while not suffering from inflation, and Kelly's criterion certainly does not do that.
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The future is uncertain. Kelly adherents argue that by compounding your wealth at the optimum rate you maximize your future options (or utility as Samuelson might call it).
Remember Thorp used this principal in his Hedge fund and achieved exceptional returns with VERY low risk.
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