Rating: - Trillion Dollar Bet
This is really a great video. If you have a passion for finance, you do have to watch it. It's an excellent opportunity to see the smartest people in the world of derivatives both "practitioners" and academics from top Universities. It is very clear and easy to understand even for those who have just entered the world of derivative evaluation using Black, Scholes and Merton formula. The opinions of all the protagonists are really inspiring and will give you a real feeling of this world, where advanced math, economics and practice are all melted together.
Rating: - The Trillion Dollar Bet worth a bundle
In 1998 the largest ever financial collapse, the failure of Long Term Capital Management, risked pulling the world economy down with it until the Federal Reserve Board intervened and saved the day. Trillion Dollar Bet is the story of that rescue and the Nobel Prize-winning economists whose theories of hedge funds and risk management made LTCM possible. The film traces the evolution of theories of tracking the stock market by following minute variations in prices over time and the purported ability of the stock trackers to predict movement in the markets. Such a theory, if accurate, would permit investors to profit from such fluctuations at practically no risk, an exciting possibility. And for LTCM in its first years in the 1990s, the theory seemed to yield astonishing results, until the collapse of the Russian ruble in the summer of 1998 threw a monkey wrench into the works and threated the stability of stock markets around the world. This is an exciting story for those with an interest in investing and a modicum of economics background. The target audience is certainly the well informed and interested general public and not specialists. Difficult concepts are explained with crystal clarity and common sense examples. Members of the failed firm and the Nobel laureates contribute their views on the short term success and long term failure. I found myself riveted by explanations offered and the possibilities of "money for nothing." This may be the best Nova episode I have ever seen, and for an audience interested in stock markets, economics, finance and investing the film will stimulate your mind, entertain you, and make you smile at the arrogance of those who thought they had it all figured out.
- Trillion Dollar Bet