Feb

4

An Amazing Sort of Deception, from Victor Niederhoffer

February 4, 2009 |

4 Comments so far

1. Ralph Di Fiore on February 4, 2009 9:39 am

   Deception is the foundation of magic. What makes a particular magic effect so convincing is how “natural” the deceptive move is. The more “natural” the move, the greater the deception. If a move is suspicious, it is not effective; the audience suspects something “fishy” just happened. Magicians work hard at eliminating any “unnatural moves” that will draw suspicion and lessen the effect. The same principle applies to all areas of life. The greatest deceptions occur when the moves behind the deceptions are very “natural” and the “audience” suspects nothing.

2. Stephen Oblonsky on February 4, 2009 1:04 pm

   Marcellus:
   Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
   Horatio:
   You mean Barclays?
   Soothsayer:
   Beware of the early earnings report.

3. douglas roberts dimick on February 4, 2009 2:14 pm

   One’s Own or a Belonging of Markets Only?

   Like allegory employed to invoke literary motif, so too do market exchange systems seem to belie the surmise… “Even nature I don’t think has been so good at deceit.”

   Perhaps the key is distinguishing and analyzing deceit that is intentional (of either a supernatural being or of one or more mere mortals who willed it) contra deceit that is systemic or symbiotic of a given exchange process?

   Aside from reverting to the “Is there a God?” line of query a la intent versus market random patterning, a dspec survey of articles may reflect the statement’s preciseness relative to operational indications of electronic exchanges.

   Consider: Phil’s discussion of moving averages; Vinh’s insight on metacircularity; Pitt’s referenced youtube.com video with the telling of animal crackers by Josh, Madoff’s head trader; Victor’s standard deviation (December 28, 2007) and his recent notation on the Peaks-End Rule.

   In agreement with VN’s finding, topicality spirits me to a favorite, Apocalypse Now. Some statistics (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/quotes):

   •In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #30 Greatest Movie of All Time.
   •Voted No.1 in Film4’s “50 Films To See Before You Die”.
   •Voted #7 On Empire’s 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time (September 2008)
   •One of Francis Ford Coppola’s top five favorite films of his own.

   Serving four years, I was trained by and thereafter served under many Vietnam veterans. Clearly, this time period, combined with Watergate, impacted my thinking towards government and business.

   There was this guy, mid-twenties, who visited his sister-in-law in my neighborhood. As a pre-driving age teenager, I often sensed that Lenny was different than most people; upon questioning, my parents told me that he had served in Vietnam.

   Len would sometimes take us kids in his Dodge Dart to the store or Dairy Queen after a day of haying at the farm. He was always being big brother, finding attempts share humor, yet he acted at times like a boy whose girlfriend had lied to him, thus seemingly forever heartbroken.

   Took me a long to remember and understand how he must have felt… Anger… Surely rage at times… Disappointment… Hate… Deep, deep, soul shattering dissolution…

   The poem that I wrote upon New Year’s to one’s query was an attempt to translate what must be that very same sense of betrayal and loss felt by an ever exponentially expanding range of 401k-class investors. A student and writer of poetry since days at university, I was taught that “lady’s tea poetry” is quiet right for such by those so occasioned; however, matters of import do not always subscribe to either rhyme or the niceties of political correctness.

   Perhaps we may conclude the same of the markets?

   Photo Journalist: One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can’t travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That’s dialectic physics.

   The problem with approaching markets as a game or with algorithmic quantification is that peoples’ lives are not always a riddle, let alone a Ponzi scheme – nor is there the elasticity for drawdown and savings loss. As often so assimilated when Vietnam is cited to our wars in the Middle East these past two decades, I find that those same 401k working folk correlate dollars with blood in blood not dollars.

   Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?…
   Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
   Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
   Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
   Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
   Willard: I’m a soldier.
   Kurtz: You’re neither. You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

   I am not sure how Rand would respond, but I wonder aloud, when asked, how free markets “free” populations yet may thereby enslave statistically-dominant demographic sectors by premeditated, skilled, and coordinated patterns involving our one, cited element: lying in accordance with a set of sanctioned standards and practices?

   Kurtz: What do you call assassins who accuse assassins?

   If the markets are so simultaneously consumed and fueled by falsity, lies, fraud, albeit by acts of omission or commission, as the lead article appears to so confirm, then why should people who are so harmed, perhaps permanently, then quietly, nicely accept their so tolled damages, go heal themselves, and submissively move to the next trade – picking oneself up their own bootstraps, if you will?

   Willard: Hey soldier, do you know whose in command here?
   Soldier: Ain’t you?

   Where is the reciprocity requisite to maintain fairness within that very market system so relied upon by market makers and other related (public and private) firms and institutions that therefrom profit and thrive?

   Roxanne: There are two of you, don’t you see? One that kills… and one that loves.

   Unlike most Americans, I have now lived in and with the alternative: macro and micro economic cycling micromanaged by a “centralized democratic dictatorship” seeking social harmony. How does this system fair?

   Kurtz: Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others… even the opinions of yourself?

   For comparative purposes to understand relative USA-PRC trending, albeit sanitized history books, one may go back a century, when women and minorities could not vote let alone run for president of the United States.

   Hubert: You are fighting for the biggest nothing in history.

   Ironic, during a chat two nights ago with a German national roommate studying Chinese language here, whereby we armchaired a US/EU/PRC triangulation, we concluded that all three systems demonstrated a characteristic centrality to government and market patterning: lying in accordance with a set of sanctioned standards and practices?

   Willard: It’s a way we had over here with living with ourselves. We cut ‘em in half with a machine gun and give ‘em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies.

   I do not know what happened to my childhood friend – I would like to think of and remember him so, as my friend – who appears to have been so systematically deceived and hurt. I think of him when such discussions as here are broached or brokered.

   Kurtz: I worry that my son might not understand what I’ve tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything. Everything I did, everything you saw, because there’s nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me Willard, you will do this for me.

   I do have an inkling of what is happening to one retiree, a devoted husband, and a father of two who “lost it all” with Mr. Madoff. Yes, caveat emptor must rule among a country of free- marketeers – no doubt about it, for there must be “value-added” exchange resulting with gain and loss regardless of social-economic equilibrium. Right?

   Kurtz: I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen… And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized… And I thought: My God… the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could understand that these were not monsters. These were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts… without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.

   As often heard here in China, attempting to avoid miscommunication, though perhaps inviting negotiation, we may say: “Are you sure?”

   Still, I take leave with both, first, one more piece of trivia…

   Francis Ford Coppola threatened suicide several times during the making of the film.

   Alas…

   Kilgore: You either surf or you fight.

   Kilgore: Charlie don’t surf!

   dr

4. Georgina Alexander on March 26, 2010 6:58 am

   I believe the fish pictured (taken from 'Finding Nemo') is actually a hatchet fish and not an angler fish.. but hey..