Shake Your Booty

OK, so it's not new, but once again (with feeling): events drive data, not the other way round. Of course, that's human events, particularly financial ones. Comes along the most most spectacular story in the world of quant.

Why? Bill Miller is a dinosaur, in that he's been able, on the whole, to pick good stocks. But this coda to his career is just too much:

When pitching investors, you normally don't want "hedge fund" and "earthquake" in the same sentence. But Bill Miller, already known for quirky investing methods, is starting a hedge fund that will make bets based in part on a computer model designed to predict natural disasters.

This is totally nuts, as more than a few other experts quoted in the article state. The probable macro effect of an earthquake of sufficient magnitude in a sufficiently important city, Los Angeles for the sake of argument, can be gauged. But Miller was blind to Viagra at the Home some years back, and at that time the data showing the folly of the market was in plain sight.

He said, "Here we make decisions
And we trade commodities
So if you tell me where there's famine
I can make you guarantees"
-- "What About the Love", Janis Ian/1988

Bill is about 30 years late. Senility appears to have set in.