Edward Thorp speech A Mathematical Odyssey From Las Vegas to Wall Street UCI Talk    May 3, 2012    Edward Thorp speech and presentation below: I would like to thank the UCI mathematics department for inviting me and to Professor Sarah Eichhorn for making all the arrangements.  It’s a pleasure to see so many students and faculty from UCI and from Sage Hill School, including three of my grandchildren. Today I’ll tell you how I used mathematics in roulette, casino blackjack and the stock market.  V1        For each, I’ll talk about the idea, the math behind the idea, the implementation, and what happened afterwards.  So that you don’t have to take any notes, I have posted an outline and the images for this talk on my website.      It all started with roulette,

Click for ginormous graphic Source: WSJ

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TUNIS (Reuters) - One protester died and several were injured when Tunisian Islamists defied a ban on their demonstration and clashed with police on Sunday.

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AMMAN (Reuters) - Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a Syrian rebel-held town alongside Syrian troops on Sunday and Israel threatened more attacks on Syria to rein the militia in, highlighting the risks of a wider regional conflict if planned peace talks fail.

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Last week, Bill Gross did not mince his words when he said that he now "sees bubbles everywhere" and that "when that stops there will be repercussions" but for now Benny and the Inkjets, not to mention his band of merry statist men, who take from the poor and give to the wealthy, are playing the music on Max, and so one must dance and dance and dance. And after one legacy bond king, it was the

Despite the eagerness of Abenomics and the new BOJ head Kuroda to have their cake and eat it too, in this case manifesting in soaring stock prices, plunging Yen, rising GDP and exports, and most importantly, flat or declining bond yields, so far they have succeeded in carrying out three of the four (assuming Japanese economic data reporting is more accurate than that of its neighbor China), as it

In this post, we highlight findings from scouring Gartner’s pivot tables from its 1Q13 Mobile Devices Market Share report published May 13. We find this report helpful in understanding country-by-country and region-by-region trends, which often are not given on company conference calls. Countries studied include, the U.S., China, India and Canada. Companies include ZTE, Lenovo, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Samsung, Nokia, and Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) among others. China – Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung Making Steady Progress, But The Rest of The Market Is a Chinese Vendor Story The Chinese market remains severely fragmented, with Chinese-based manufacturers, including ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo and a large assortment of white-box vendors holding roughly 75% share

The Local, a website with German news in English reports Economists warn against German euro exit. “Even a believable rumour that Germany would exit the euro would result in a massive capital flight from the countries of southern Europe to Germany.” The southern European banking system would then collapse, bringing down entire economies with them, Schmieding said. The consequences for Germany would be severe. The crisis countries could no longer pay back their debt and Germany’s

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ATLANTA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, under fire for security lapses at a U.S. mission in Libya, will in a speech on Thursday lay out his wide-ranging counter-terrorism policy, from the controversial use of drones to efforts to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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Last week, we remembered Barron’s columnist and editor, Alan Abelson (A Few Words About Alan Abelson). This week, Barron’s gathered various commentary from Colleagues, Wall Street Friends and Readers to remember Alan Abelson. It is a long piece filled with words from many readers. The shame of it is that Abelson himself never got to...Read More

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I have not been a fan of this rally, and I have been selling into it.  I do have a rule for equity clients — cash never goes above 20%.  I have been close to that recently, and after rebalancing some companies that have hit the top of the weighting band, I have bought those companies with the lowest weights in the portfolio.  I have also added some stable companies in the recent past — Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), Ingram Micro (IM), Validus Holdings (VR), AFLAC (AFL), and CST Brands (CST). My next quarterly reshaping comes up next week, and again, I will be looking at neglected industries in the market for areas to purchase.  When the momentum runs this hard, I have to be content to trail (though I haven’t been trailing).  I have to ask where things will be three or more years

TUNIS (Reuters) - Supporters of a hardline Islamist group clashed with Tunisian police in two cities on Sunday after the government banned its annual rally and the regional arm of al Qaeda urged it to stand firm against the authorities.

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Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve's policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to finance the US budget deficit by purchasing US Treasury bonds and to keep the prices high of debt-related derivatives on the "banks too big to fail" (BTBF) balance sheets by purchasing mortgage-backed derivatives. Without QE, interest rates would be much higher, and values on the banks' balance sheets would be much lower.Quantitative Easing has been underway since December 2008. During these 54 months, the Federal Reserve has created several trillion new dollars

For more than 100 years, unless you were an industry insider or had connections to DeBeers, the prospect of investing in diamonds was completely out of reach. However, for the first time in history, diamond prices are no longer manipulated and are now a product of true market forces, providing investors with a long awaited opportunity. Diamonds are not just a “girl’s best friend,” they’re also the next golden opportunity for millions of individual investors seeking safety and performance in this uncertain global economy. Investors can now buy, take physical delivery, track real-time prices, and liquidate their investment-grade diamond positions effortlessly. And even better – prices are expected to spike soon. So what happened over the last 100 years to make such an opportunity

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police enraged by the kidnapping of seven of their colleagues by Islamist gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula blocked a commercial border crossing with Israel on Sunday, security sources said.

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BAMAKO (Reuters) - After winning adulation across Mali for a five month military offensive that crushed al Qaeda fighters, France is now frustrating some of its allies by pushing for a political settlement with a separate group of Tuareg rebels.

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AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops supported by Hezbollah militants launched an offensive to retake a major town near Lebanon from rebels on Sunday, the heaviest fighting yet involving Lebanese armed group, opposition activists said.

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Economic Prospects for the Long Run Chairman Ben S. Bernanke At Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, Massachusetts May 18, 2013   • 29 KB PDF Let me start by congratulating the graduates and their parents. The word “graduate” comes from the Latin word for “step.” Graduation from college is only one step on...Read More

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CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police enraged by the kidnapping of seven of their colleagues by Islamist gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula blocked a commercial border crossing with Israel on Sunday, security sources said.

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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron is "losing control of his party", Conservative Party grandee Geoffrey Howe said on Sunday, as a row raged over whether a close aide to Cameron had labeled grassroots activists "mad, swivel-eyed loons".

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