A review of the recent black swan events

FINANCIAL CRISIS

The black swan events of recent years are just a matter of perception, says Stuart Frost, portfolio manager at RWC Partners.

The events of the past few years have been dramatic, for some life changing, with various buzz words populating the airwaves and internet, such as “black swan events”, a term made famous by Nassim Taleb. This term has captured the financial community’s attention as an explanation for recent events that are in theory unforeseen. In my early years in the market these events were known as bubbles or market crashes and history is littered with such events that in reality are the result of human greed chasing the value of a financial or underlying physical instrument (historically tulip bulbs...