Chaos Kings

How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

By: Scott Patterson

Narrated by: Eric Yang

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller

Written by a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter, this is a fascinating deep dive into the world of billion-dollar traders and high-stakes crisis predictors who strive to turn extreme events into financial windfalls.

There’s no doubt that our world has gotten more extreme. Pandemics, climate change, superpower rivalries, cyberattacks, political radicalization—virtually, everywhere we look there is mayhem bearing down on us, putting trillions of assets at risk.

And at least two factions have formed around how to respond. In Chaos Kings, Scott Patterson depicts how one faction, led by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan, believes humans can never see the big disaster coming. In their view, extreme events—so-called Black Swans—while inevitable, will always catch us by surprise. In 2007, Taleb’s longtime collaborator, Mark Spitznagel, launched the Universa hedge fund, which would go on to make billions protecting investors against unforeseen chaos in the market.

A second faction, which relies on complex formulas, believes looming chaos can be detected. Chief among these risk prognosticators is Didier Sornette, a colorful French mathematician who enjoys riding his motorcycle at speeds in excess of 170 miles per hour. When Sornette looks out from what he calls his Financial Crisis Observatory in Zurich, Switzerland, what he sees are Dragon Kings—punishing events that are unlikely to occur but have probabilities that can be predicted…and defended against.

Which faction is right? All of our financial futures may depend on the answer.

©2023 Scott Patterson (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

Masterclass of risk management frameworks

This book explores the views of the pioneers of risk management from academia and from practitioners. Excellent!

Ok

This book is basically fine/ok. I had higher hopes for this book in general.

Starts great and then becomes all about climate change

What starts as a very interesting and topical book…gets cut short and turns into political diatribes. The topics of covid and climate change are definitely interesting applications of the principles but felt like they was most of the second half of the book. Felt more the author wanted to stress this rather than the strategy

Enjoyed the insights into spitznagel & taleb

Another great Patterson book. Always delivers. Thought the ending was rather abrupt & lost me a bit at the end of the book when writing about climate change & risk. The best book out there giving insight into spitznagel & his investing.

Spectacular

After having read various works by M. Spitzangel and N.N. Taleb, this is the great addition to those with some valuable insights and clarifications. I have enjoyed it a lot.

Solid look at volatility

A decent read. Focuses on Impirica Capital and the crazy events that have moved markets recent.

I enjoyed the book

What a great investment of my time. I listened to Antigragile years ago, this reminded me to keep 80% of my investments low risk and 20% available for the fat tails (both good and bad).

Ok listen - much derivative and a bit disjointed

Most of the information about Universa and Black Swan events are already out there. Both Taleb and Spitznagel have written extensively about the ideas in here. I personally believe Universa's model of not forecasting but knowing that big drawdowns happen is the right way to go. I do wish he had an offering for retail investors. It just seems so straightforward and simple to have most of your money in the s&p 500 and small part of used as insurance hedging. Very few people get forecasting right so this just makes sense. The numbers Universa demonstrate are very compelling. The book was disjointed in that it had a long section on climate change. I didn't really see the tie into Universa and Black Swans. It seems as if the author just wanted to talk about it. If you already understand Unviversa and Black Swans, probably not the book for you. If don't understand, it's a decent listen.

Great book och risk and Taleb

I enjoyed the book, overall worth a read.

Empirica Capital and its historical peforamne and stategy was super interesting!

Patterson Nails it Again

A message to those who will hear it.

A warning for those who will not.