Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street

Acknowledgments

The ideas presented in this book are the fruit of an informal collaboration of mathematically inclined researchers who became obsessed with the idea of betting—real bets for significant stakes versus all comers—on the results of their analyses. It is difficult to assign individual credit in a collaboration, and in any case there were too many participants to list here, even if I knew all of them. So I will take the easy way out and dedicate this book to anyone who ever made computations, bet on them, and learned enough from the experience to become successful.

More specifically, I acknowledge the tremendous benefit I have from arguing over these ideas in several places. I thank my colleagues at the various financial institutions I have worked for, and participants in risk conferences over the years, including those run by the Global Association of Risk Professionals, the Professional Risk Managers International Association, Risk magazine, and others. A special mention goes to the triennial conferences on gambling and risk taking produced by the University of Nevada at Reno, which attract a far broader variety of participants than the other conferences.

I also had the benefit of discussing these ideas at online sites, including Wilmott.com, NuclearPhynance.com, QuantNet.com/, and TwoPlusTwo.com. And speaking of Internet sites, everyone connected with eRaider.com helped forge my ideas.

It is a little weird to dedicate a book to fictional characters, especially ones ...