A veteran Wall Street Journal reporter dives into the world of billion-dollar traders and
high-stakes crisis predictors who strive to turn extreme events into financial windfalls.
There's no doubt that our world has gotten more extreme. Pandemics climate change superpower
rivalries technological disruption political radicalisation religious fundamentalism - all
threaten chaos that put trillions in assets at risk. But around the world across a wide
variety of disciplines would-be super-forecasters are trying to take the guesswork out of what
formerly seemed like random chance. Some put their faith in 'black swans' - unpredictable
catastrophic events that can't be foreseen but send exotic financial instruments screaming in
high-profit directions. Most famous among this group of big-bet traders are those who run the
Universa fund who on days of extreme upheaval have made as much as $1 billion. Author
Scott Patterson gained exclusive access to Universa strategists and met with savvy seers in a
variety of fields from earthquake prediction to counterterrorism to climatology to see if
it's actually possible to bet on disaster - and win. Riveting relevant and revelatory this
is a must-read for anyone curious about how some of today's investors alchemise catastrophe
into profit.
