You’ve got to have skin in the game!

therealasset.co.uk / By  RESEARCH DESK / December 19, 2012

Below Ralph Hazell, CEO of gold investment platform The Real Asset Company, takes us through some of the main points he has drawn from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s new book ‘ Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand‘ .

The Black Swan is one of my favourite all time books, I enjoy the way Taleb sees through the smoke and mirrors of the banking system and breaks down various myths on understanding risk. Thanks to this, I was looking forward to reading Anti fragile which I see as a refinement of Taleb’s theories discussed in The Black Swan. It’s safe to say I wasn’t disappointed by Anti fragile and have tried to distill his philosophy into a few core points.

• Companies, governments, banks and individuals should not be too protected from risk. If they make a decision/prediction that turns out to be wrong, they must take the hit and suffer the consequences.
  • The more you are exposed to risks and adversity the more you stand to gain as you learn to handle difficult situations. Conversely if you try to protect banks (or people/companies…) from any volatility, they simply don’t evolve, and risk is therefore mis-priced (Greenspan put) and it just leads to an even bigger bust eventually (2008… 20??)

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