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Veritasium

Veritasium

20,900,000 subscribers

👁 17,217,380 views

The Equation That Beat Wall Street

Video Overview & Insights

How the Black-Scholes/Merton equation made trillions of dollars. Sponsored by Henson Shaving - Don’t forget to check out http://hensonshaving.com/derek and enter code “derek” at checkout to get a FREE pack of 100 blades (2+ years worth) with the purchase of a razor. Just make sure both products are in the cart for the code to take effect.

아 슈카 없네

— @po_porani

Special thanks to our Patreon supporters! Join this list to help us keep our videos free, forever:

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There is no random price movement ...

— @johnmoser1162

If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically - https://ve42.co/SnatomsV

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26:48 sad this video doesn't really touch what Jim Simons actually did

— @busterdafydd3096

A huge thank you to Prof. Andrew Lo (MIT) for speaking with us and helping with the script.

We would also like to thank the following:

nice video

— @DailyQuirkScienceHQ

Prof. Amanda Turner (University of Leeds)

Owen Maher (Electrify Video Partners)

18:10

— @PranavRaj-j8f

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References:

How can old journalists understand, let alone comprehend something. Journalists.

— @ravendouglas8506

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons launched the quant revolution, Gregory Zuckerman. Penguin Publishing Group. - https://ve42.co/GZuckerman

The Physics of Finance: Predicting the Unpredictable: Can Science Beat the Market? James Owen Weatherall. Short Books. - https://ve42.co/FinancePhysics

Good, I am glad he lost his slave ship money.

— @LewisDecodesAI

The Statistical Mechanics of Financial Markets, J.Voigt. Springer. - https://ve42.co/Springer

Black, F., & Scholes, M. (1973). The pricing of options and corporate liabilities. Journal of political economy, 81(3), 637-654. - https://ve42.co/BlackScholes

All the dumb doods were hella jealous that the smart people were making bank, so they just created tax laws that helped rig the game (because the dumb people always seem to either be politicians, or trust fund babies born with a silver spoon in their mouth & a politician in their pocket). By systematically deducting investment losses from investment gains, you generate an asymmetric return stream known as Tax Alpha (no relation). Studies from eg MIT show you can add an average of 0.85% to 1.10% in annualized excess returns over a passive strategy. But that's a starting point, not the end game.

— @mscott54321

Cornell, B. (2020). Medallion fund: The ultimate counterexample?. The Journal of Portfolio Management, 46(4), 156-159. - https://ve42.co/Medallion

Images & Video:

Subtitles are not synchronized.

— @notamouse5630

Ed Thorp on The Tim Ferris Show - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNvz91Jyzbg

Jim Simons on TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5kIdtMJGc8

There's a great book on this topic titled "Fortune's Formula" by William Poundstone.

— @jmrm01

Jim Simons on Numberphile - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0

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@Veritasium The subtitles/closed captions for this video are way out of sync

— @rodneyredelinghuys5157

Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:

Adam Foreman, Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bill Linder, Blake Byers, Burt Humburg, Chris Harper, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, Diffbot, Evgeny Skvortsov, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, I.H., John H. Austin, Jr. ,john kiehl, Josh Hibschman, Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Max Paladino, Meekay, meg noah, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, Stephen Wilcox, Tj Steyn, TTST, Ubiquity Ventures

When i took a pde course during my grad i was always amused how the heat equation could be related to Stock prices.

— @Msb-256

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Directed by Will Wood and Derek Muller

Non wage income must be taxed.

— @Randy-br3kf

Written by Will Wood, Emily Zhang, Petr Lebedev and Derek Muller

Camera operation by Raquel Nuno

safest asset .. US treasury bonds. 😂

— @humilulo

Additional research by Gregor Čavlović

Edited by Jack Saxon and Trenton Oliver

Is it me or susbtitles gone bonkers?

— @girayhankaya

Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek, Ivy Tello, David Szakaly and Will Wood

Produced by Will Wood, Han Evans and Derek Muller

0:01 (⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)

— @robertcorpuz1105

Thumbnail by Ren Hurley

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Pond5

Why did the video go black all of a sudden with just the Ve logo on it??

— @kevinm7734

Music from Epidemic Sound

LOL. The equation that has destroyed the financial system over and over again except for bailouts which the "uninformed" paid for. Nobody factors in the fact that, when more than one player uses these models, they cancel each other out. The real way to beat the market is be a big enough player that you can push the price around and force your options to pay off reliably. Or to have more information than others about the surrounding environment, known as "macro".

— @sling_trade

More User Perspectives

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With this one I know I'm dumb

@UngadAvci
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With this one Newton's lost for me

@UngadAvci
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Stock markets are just a modified ponzi scheme

@adef-pj1du
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jfyi the closed captions are badly desynchronised

@ChocolatesAfterDark
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"This is diffusion"...that is naming a phenomenon, not explaining why it occurs. 13:06

@davidgillespie9256
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I despise stock markets and capitalism, but this is really scientifically interesting :0

@Emma-ol3ed
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Simmon's Medallion Fund is a cover to farm and retain the world's best Physicists within the US.

@drives9965
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Very neat video. I lived in Chicagoland for a bit & visited CBOE a few times including a tour of the trading floor. There weren't crowds of folks on the floor even though volitility was high. I asked the guy at the IBM pit about using the Black Scholes model & he showed his analysis on his tablet PC which had wireless data connections. The trading floor went fully automatic several years ago. I'm sure it will get more exciting with AI.

@dr9205
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I spent years working on the floors of F&O. First I was so chuffed and proud to be there, being part of the big game.. I worked for a few Tier1's across the globe, but I can remember being on the floor in London when a leading bank was fined $16b.. I turned to my boss and said that's got to sting and he replied. No Chance, we knew it was coming, we had that money in a working account for two years and it doubled its value, so it paid for itself.. Before long, I hated it, every stinking greedy little part of it and how the entire world plays to its song... Not that I liked May as Prime Minister, wrong politics for me, but she didn't screw us.... The global banking system did, and no one even nattered an eyelid at the route coarse. Burn it all! You want to know why the third world exists in 2026, i jut told you..

@MM4F
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@4:00

@nonenone9493
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And here we are again.... every time my youtube gets left playing I come back to one of your videos.... starting to think its not coincidence..

@Bjscribben
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Just found this video. What a fantastic video. I’ve been trading for 10 years and self taught quant for 9. I don’t start making money until I stopped trying to predict and use Hidden Markov Models and generating the right synthetic data for Monte Carlo. Essentially, it’s all a coin flip. Mathematically adjusting RISK from start to finish while adjusting while in trade. I stopped following know rules to adjust while in trade and probabilities become my gold mine. This is a great video. Really, really good video

@landdunbreakable9342
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15:25 I really can't understand this. Yes, it seems easier to figure things out in the past than it is now, I know that's a misconception, but how could something as intuitive as remembering the cards played in blackjack not have been discovered until the 1950s? I mean, knowing the cards played is practically the biggest trick in the game.

@prodbecko
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Great video, but Derek, the last sentence is wrong: [...then we will have a perfectly efficient market, where all price movements are [remove "random"; insert "predicted"].

@willferguson2700
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Fantastic explanation, thank you!

@AdamGordon-o1s
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Jewpropaganda

@lorezampadeferro8641
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This was super helpful, thanks!

@doggyl3-o7v
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Why is the sponsored ad a seperate video now , crazy

@sumitbhuia
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Great episode, but the CC seems to be from another episode on playing cards…🤔

@jennifermatascik7394
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cool!

@marcomonti5758
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How did bro time travel to 2026 two years ago 😂

@IvanJumbo-f4x
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This is a classic case of survivors bias. Simons nearly went broke multiple times. It all looks great in retrospect.

@sgrant39
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Why is no one pointing out the fact that since stock price cannot be negative it cannot follow normal distribution. It follows log normal distribution. The returns on stock is normally distributed. 11:09

@MonikaNareshkumarDubey
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Isaac newton really experienced the “ ANDDDD ITS GONE” moment before anyone

@Mr10178
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Gambling but heavily favoring those that can leverage it.

@Hanser19
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Prices will never be truly random when random events by humans exist.

@GodzillaGoesGaga
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The last line I kind of disagree with, using inefficiencies might create a new inefficiency

@solidbroadcast3053
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bascially, if you can observe every air particle ever, you can predict turbulance

@nopepart2
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Why are the captions COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the spoken text?

@HallGalt
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Fell asleep. Guess I’ll always be broke.

@Photoshop729
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I made an AI that can predict the market I don't need to be a math genius. :)

@lokied-qc8ft
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Are they not betting on the stolen wages of workers though? Like math is great but if if describes suffering of the poor and theft by the rich then what’s the point?

@wondermoreforever