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Catchword for “black swan event”
Catchword: black swan event
Filed Under:
Part of Speechn.
Quotation: On Black Monday, October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones index, for reasons still being debated, fell 508 points, almost a quarter of its total. (The current equivalent, for comparison’s sake, would be a 3,200-point loss on one day.) The drop turned out to be a “black swan event,” a weirdly poetic economist’s term meaning, basically, a fluke (though few people remember it, the Dow still eked out a positive finish for the year).
Article or Document Title:
“The Stench of ‘89” (URL)
Author:
Michael Idov
Article, Document, Publication, Web Site:
New York Magazine
Publishing Location:
New York City
Date of Publication:
Feb. 4, 2008
This catchword has yet to be researched.
Comments:
I believe Nassim Taleb coined this term in his book “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets”, and then explored it further in “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”
by Kevin Way 08 Feb 08, 0242 GMT

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