LTCM’s partners saw themselves as conservative, not reckless, before the crisis.

Evidence

The first explanation-consciously reckless risk-taking is entirely inadequate as an account for LTCM’s 1998 disaster. The partners in LTCM believed themselves to be running the fund conservatively, and in the modest volatility of its returns they had evidence for the correctness of this belief. After the fund’s crisis, it was commonly portrayed as wildly risk-taking, but it is hard to find anyone inside or outside LTCM who can be proved to have expressed that view before the crisis. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1016

Categorization

• XREF: The ex-post-vs-ex-ante risk perception gap connects to Kahneman and Tversky framing and to disaster narrative construction in financial history. — connects to: LTCM’s crisis did not stem from blind faith in mathematical models. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1017

Broader Connections

• LTCM’s crisis did not stem from blind faith in mathematical models. #responds-to (0.75) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1017