Chapter 10 opens with a Warren Buffett quote: “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” Hard to argue with that. Travers uses this chapter to walk us through the risk due diligence process, and honestly, some of the findings are pretty eye-opening.
You want to fix homelessness? Great. But can you draw it?
That’s basically the challenge of Chapter 7 of Systems Thinking for Social Change. David Peter Stroh walks through Stage 2a of the systems thinking process: using systems mapping to understand current reality. Not what you wish reality was. Not what your grant proposal says it is. What’s actually happening, why, and how everything connects.
In Chapter 16, Larry Harris introduces us to the Value Traders. While dealers provide “immediacy” for small orders, value traders provide “depth” for the massive moves. They are the market’s ultimate safety net.
Everyone back in Colorado Springs imagined Walter Davis living it up on some tropical island with a woman on his arm and a drink in his hand. The newspapers speculated he was in the South Seas. Or Greece, like the fugitive energy mogul Samuel Insull. Surely the “master criminal” was enjoying his stolen fortune somewhere exotic.
In Part 1 we covered trading sessions and the main execution systems: quote-driven dealer markets and order-driven markets. Now let’s get into brokered markets, hybrid structures, crossing networks, and the information plumbing that holds everything together.
Book: Beating the Street by Peter Lynch with John Rothchild | ISBN: 978-0-671-75915-5
Peter Lynch ran the most famous mutual fund in America. And for years he completely forgot to invest in the companies that sell mutual funds.
Part III of Atlas Shrugged opens and the mystery is over. We finally know who John Galt is. And honestly? The reveal is everything.
Last time we covered what arbitrageurs are and why they matter. But here is the thing: knowing that arbitrage exists is very different from understanding how hard it actually is to pull off. This second half of Chapter 17 gets into the specific strategies, the risks, and the spectacular ways arbitrage can go wrong.
You want to end homelessness in your community. You get a bunch of important people in a room. Everyone nods along about helping the homeless. Great start, right?
This is post 21 of 23 in a series on Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity by Jamshid Gharajedaghi (ISBN: 978-0-7506-7973-2).