Nassim Taleb – The Black Swan
What is a black swan? Nothing extra ordinary if you’ve seen one but if you’ve only seen a white one and suddenly you get to see a black one, you’d be surprised.
Black swan is a term for events that we don’t or can’t anticipate but have a big impact on our lives and reality. To explain it – imagine a market that steadily grows 7% a year but suddenly starts growing 20, 30 or even 40% for a couple of years. It almost defies gravity. Then suddenly plummets all the way to the bottom. Massive losses, people jumping out of windows as they lost everything and have half or even less than what they had. No one saw it coming. Black swan. An unexpected event.
