Some have said to me “John Begg, How it is possible for you to clearly and blithely understand what is: Derivative risk arbitrage hedging, when the new young President, who went up to Ha`vad is not likely capable of understanding that enterprise?”

I have to correct:

First, and most embarrassingly so for me and my family, the new young President did not go up to Hav~ad, but rather to King’s College, called now, I think, by the Americans, Columbia College~~which is my maternal school.

Second, if the new young President cannot understand an asset group as simple as derivative risk arbitrage hedging, he really oughtn’t to be President.  The enterprise is so basic, it is almost childlike.

Derivative risk arbitrage hedging is part and parcel of what is most erroneously called in the conventional newspapers:

The “hedge fund” business—which was named, derivatively such, by a sociologist, yes, I said a sociologist, believe it or not, called Alfred W. Jones, who is credited with coining the phrase:

 “Hedged fund.”

Mr. Alfred W. Jones went to heaven vehemently rejecting the expression “hedge fund,” as that nominal appellation belies an ignorance of the type of fund under discussion which is to say that:

A hedged fund is an asset fund that “is hedged” against risk, on the premise that the hedged fund trader will win a few and lose a few but, in the end, he will take net profit.

Some say to me—“oh well, that sounds as though it were just plain gambling, like betting on a horse—that’s not real investing—such as buying equities or bonds.”

Nonsense.  Placing what you deem to be informed bets on future outcomes is not any more or less a gamble than is anything else.

Very likely, the highest risk, the greatest gamble, is to get out of bed in the morning.  All of life is a gamble.  To not gamble is: to not be alive.

At the highest levels of finance, there exists a rarefied air breathed in by a very select group of men who do nothing but gamble on future possibilities all day long.

So, you’ve no choice guys:

The tumblin dice~~you gotta roll ’em