You have a certain set of facts and you are looking for situations where you have an edge, whether the edge is psychological or statistical.

In the real world, illiquid assets carry a discount.

What do you call a stock that's down 90%? A stock that was down 80% and then got cut in half.

A 99% Value-at-Risk calculation does not evaluate what happens in the last one percent... This is like an airbag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident.

When you leave a good job to go off on your own and don't expect to make money for a while, you name the firm whatever your wife says you should.

I will keep a substantial long exposure to gold -- which serves as a Jelly Donut antidote for my portfolio. While I'd love for our leaders to adopt sensible policies that would reduce the tail risks so that I could sell our gold, one nice thing about gold is that it doesn't even have quarterly conference calls.

You have a certain set of facts and you are looking for situations where you have an edge, whether the edge is psychological or statistical.