First Principles

Our first principles draw from those who redefined uncertainty and risk. These form the framework guiding our research.

The Nature of Edge

“It is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. How frequent the profit is irrelevant; it is the magnitude of the outcome that counts.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)."
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Patterns of price movement are not random. However, they're close enough to random so that getting some edge out of it, is not easy and not so obvious."
— Jim Simons

Uncertainty, Antifragility & Risk-taking

"Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better."
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile."
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind."
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"In order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can’t know) is the central idea of uncertainty."
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a 10 percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you're still going to be wrong nine times out of ten.
— Jeff Bezos

We all know that if you swing for the fences, you're going to strike out a lot, but you're also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments."
— Jeff Bezos

Discipline & Systems

"The only rule is we never override the computer."
— Jim Simons

“Over a short time increment, one observes the variability of the portfolio, not the returns.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“There are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. Most people give up before the rewards.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb