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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1273 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 17 equations that changed the world

Some of the later stuff has been simplified down to its pithy essentials. 14, Schrodinger's Equation, for example. That li'l upside down triangle is doing a lot of work:

Not all of it changed things for the better either. 17, Black-Scholes, is just a damn partial differential equation which, in finance world, means it's a fuckin' Elvish incantation from outer Venus because those guys, business majors that they are, think algebra is higher math. More importantly, it's a partial differential equation that basically changed finance in the '80s.

Things went worse than expected.

Note that "picking up nickels in front of bulldozers" was an epithet hurled at LTCM, the hedge fund that had Myron Scholes on their board, to denigrate their investment strategy as entirely too risky for the yield. Then of course the Fed dumped $4b into it to keep the banking system from collapsing in 1998, establishing a trend. As such, "picking up nickels in front of bulldozers" ceased to be a warning but instead became a sound investment strategy pursued by high frequency traders, options traders, and all those idiots on Reddit trading 3x-inverse VIX.