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Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance

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Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance RF Fall2005 v10 revisedpg44.ps - 10/14/2005 4:27 PM BOOKREVIEW Calculated Risk FISCHER BLACK AND THE eccentric; for instance, he was well-known for his massive REVOLUTIONARY IDEA OF FINANCE note-taking system which comprised many thousands of sin- BY PERRY MEHRLING gle note cards in individually labeled envelopes and for his HOBOKEN, N.J.: JOHN WILEY & SONS, 2005, 374 PAGES great love of video games. His ideas about finance were no less unusual; he spurned REVIEWED BY ERIC NIELSEN large areas of modern economics and finance, preferring he financial world has changed immensely in the past instead to focus on a few simplified, intuitive models and 30 years. Through the use of derivatives (assets practical ways to make financial markets operate more Twhose value is determined by another, risky asset) smoothly. With an academic background in physics, logic, and and elaborate hedging schemes, firms can now buy and sell artificial intelligence, Fischer Black began his career skeptical risk, protecting themselves from virtually any unwanted of abstract formulations in finance and the power of econo- eventuality. This innovation has been made possible by the mists to influence a highly uncertain world. Black extended contributions of a select group of financial economists and this line of thinking into many subfields of economics, the growing numbers of mathematically trained analysts positing unorthodox and highly controversial theories about known on Wall Street as “quants.” Finance theorists build monetary policy and the cause of business cycles. models for pricing securities, and quants figure out practical Fischer Black is described by Perry Mehrling as the ways to implement these models and to profit from them. “CAPM man,” and in a way this moniker is the key to under- For all the technical sophistication of modern financial standing much of his idiosyncratic approach to finance. markets, it may seem at times that our understanding of the CAPM, which stands for “Capital Asset Pricing Model,” inner workings of these markets has not greatly improved. For mathematically describes a rational way to price risk in an instance, the sharp drop in equity prices of many high-tech idealized economy. Developed independently by several stocks in 2000 wiped out billions of dollars in assets, demon- economists in the mid-1960s, CAPM gives a simple formula strating that financial markets can still be subject to high for the excess return or “risk premium” for holding a risky levels of volatility. How much, then, should we trust financial stock compared with the return to holding the market models, and how much do they really tell us about the world? index, and uses this relationship to price all securities in the These and other questions are addressed in Perry market. Though CAPM makes several empirically false Mehrling’s excellent new biography of Fischer Black, one of predictions, such as that all investors will hold only the same the great innovators of modern finance theory as well as one combinations of stocks and trade very little, it does provide of its earliest practitioners. In cover- a rigorous framework with which to ing this unusual and brilliant man’s analyze questions of risk and reward. life, Mehrling, an economist at We might not live in a CAPM world, Barnard College, also provides an but Black thought that through engaging history of the development financial innovation we could some- of quantitative finance and a solid day, and that this was a worthy goal. introduction to some of its central From his early days as a consult- concepts. ant when he urged his clients to adopt financial instruments which An Eccentric Vision have now become standard (index Described by a colleague as “the only funds, hedged options positions, real genius … in finance,” mathemati- etc.) to his last days as a partner at cian-turned finance professor Fischer Goldman Sachs where he could see Black embraced the inherent difficul- many of his innovations in practice, ties of finance en route to uncovering Black always remained focused on some of its deepest principles. the idea that risk is simply the price Among academics, Black stands out of reward, and that the better both for the depth and originality of we understand this relationship, his research and for his significant the better off we will be. He contributions in the private sector as even applied CAPM to his one of the first and most celebrated personal life; he took academic risks quants. He was also something of an constantly since these promised 44 Region Focus • Fall 2005 RF Fall2005 v10 revisedpg45.ps - 10/14/2005 4:27 PM great rewards with little downside while at the same time with its assets growing from $1 billion to $7.5 billion in just eating ascetic, unadorned meals to mitigate a family history three years, but in 1998 LTCM faced collapse. Black believed of health problems. Ultimately, these efforts were for naught that LTCM’s strategy was based on a dangerous assumption: as throat cancer claimed Black’s life prematurely in 1995 at that markets are inefficient in a way that can be exploited for the age of 57. systematic profit. Such opportunities may arise for limited periods of time, Black acknowledged. But over the long haul Protection against Uncertainty markets are efficient, and any strategy based on a contrary Working as a business consultant in the late 1960s, Black assumption is likely to fail, sometimes spectacularly. mastered CAPM and began thinking of ways to apply it to financial and economic questions. Starting from a Black and Macroeconomics CAPM-like equilibrium, he and finance professor Myron Black took his peculiar, CAPM-derived ideas beyond Wall Scholes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were Street. He was interested in macroeconomic questions, and able to make their most celebrated discovery, the Black- it was his inability to get his papers on monetary theory and Scholes Options Pricing formula which gave a rational business cycles published that prompted him to leave the method for valuing derivative secu- academy for Goldman Sachs. For rities. instance, while at Chicago, he Two years after Black’s death, debated Milton Friedman about the Scholes and Robert Merton were Black always remained power of the Federal Reserve. Black awarded the Nobel Prize for this argued that it could not affect the contribution to mathematical focused on the idea money supply unless people let it, finance. Black-Scholes set off a wave since otherwise one would have to of research and model building that that risk is simply the assume untaken profit opportuni- allowed firms to control their risk ties before the Fed acts. Essentially, much more precisely than before. So price of reward. Black assumed equilibrium before a successful was his formula that Black Fed action, and asked what incen- was given academic appointments at tives would prompt financial the University of Chicago and then MIT. Black’s meteoric institutions to alter their behavior after a Fed policy change. rise in economics is particularly remarkable since his doctor- Friedman responded by saying that Black’s position was ate was in applied mathematics; Black had never taken an “utterly fallacious.” Despite hours of debates in monetary economics or finance course in his life, yet in a few years theory seminars, Friedman was unable to convince Black working on weekends and evenings he was able to move to that he was wrong. While Black remained unpersuaded, his the forefront of his field. theory remains a distinctly minority view among monetary Throughout his working career, Black was able to economists. construct powerful, intuitive models, many of which, like At MIT, Black clashed with Robert Solow and other Black-Scholes, have stood the test of time. One reason for neo-Keynesians by arguing that business cycles arise natural- this strength lay in Black’s deep respect for the uncertainty ly when production cycles are mismatched with consumer involved in life; like CAPM, his models describe only a tastes. In his view not much could be done by the govern- moment in time and are not dependent on historical trends ment to smooth out these cycles, whereas Keynesianism in data which may change without notice. Black scorned recommended active government intervention to stabilize econometrics and other forms of economic modeling for macroeconomic fluctuations. Though well thought-out, introducing spurious precision where none lay. He, perhaps Black’s ideas were so radical that he had a difficult time even alone among economists, was not surprised when the stock engaging his colleagues in debate. market plummeted unexpectedly in October of 1987; he Unlike other economists, Black did not care if his thought that congestion on the trading floor and a change in models were easily testable because he thought the sentiment were enough to account for the fall. If we think purpose of economics was to provide insight, not testable that the world is volatile and unpredictable, then we should predictions. He liked to approach each new problem with not be surprised when dramatic and unexpected things a fresh eye — his friends and collaborators often happen. Rather, we should seek to protect ourselves commented that it was difficult to tell where Black would adequately against such shocks. stand on a given topic based on his other stances. The only Interestingly, when offered the chance to join Long-Term constant that he permitted himself was a belief in equilib- Capital Management (LTCM) in 1994, a firm whose rium as the appropriate lens with which to view a highly principals included Scholes and Merton, Black declined. unpredictable future. His approach to macroeconomics Though his former colleagues believed they could profitably was thus ultimately rooted in his understanding of risk exploit some simple arbitrage opportunities at virtually no and uncertainty — that is, in CAPM, the revolutionary risk, Black believed quite the opposite — that they were idea of finance.
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