This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It's an example of almost pure competition, and yet there are these enormous salaries, all of which means that there are really not enough qualified people to fulfill the demand in this rip-roaring market for servicing the people who run money. All three students Alvin Roth, Bengt Holmström and Paul Milgromare extremely talented, intelligent and skilled people. Then he came to the MBA program, and my colleague identified Paul Milgrom as this exceptional MBA student with strong analytical and mathematical skills. I think it's over. It turned out that he put an advertisement in the paper, in that town in Germany, saying ‘This is a terrible thing. It's almost as competitive as retailing. He started with $15,000 and had a miserable rate of return in the early years. So. The reason there’s a video of this is that they have a system at the front of their house, that the doorbell where the chime that you would push the bell in order to ring at the door, it’s actually a camera and a microphone. It's sort of a matter, I would think, of pure statistics. And, primarily, your style of stock investing would be described as growth stock investing? Very many readers today may not know the story of. Earnings. I take it you did not have money with him. And I said, "Are you going to hire people and give them offices like that?". MLA style: Interview with Robert B. Wilson, February 2021. TheStreet.com has a revenue-sharing relationship with Amazon.com under which it receives a portion of the revenue from Amazon purchases by customers directed there from TheStreet.com. Present company excepted, who do you think was the greatest stock investor that you have ever seen operating in the market when you were active? Since this is in the period before the election, I thought it was one of these political advertisements. Then he went, with this post-doctoral fellowship, to the University of Louvain. Just pick one that sticks in my our mind. Keep in mind, there were jets then, and one could get on, go out to Vegas, and really have a good time. And of course, short-sellers in the past 10 years have had a miserable time. In your investing approach, give us an example of a great success. Brett Fromson: How much money did you start with, and how much money did you end with when you retired? (Laughs) Excuse me. I'm wondering, in retrospect, do you think you should have just capitulated sooner? Yeah. As they traveled through Germany to get to Louvain in Belgium, they stopped in a little town. Tasked with a mission to manage Alfred Nobel's fortune and has ultimate responsibility for fulfilling the intentions of Nobel's will. I think. Mr. Wilson suffered a stroke in June, Gary Castle, his accountant, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. He and his wife Eva go hiking together with me and Mary. Normally every Wednesday we go on a hike – so that is probably what we will do after this call. It’s not surprising that they do well. I don't think Buffett himself can sell them, though. Although the institutional salesmen could often recommend sales or shorts of companies, because they were individuals and not part of the firm, whereas the research department couldn't do it. Robert Wilson: I studied architecture, so I tend to think more architecturally. Because as the new models of jets came, they were able to use them for shorter segments. Or the Internet, e-tailers running standing retailers out of business. Robert B. Wilson - Interview, February 2021, The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2020. It was more accidental. He spoke earlier this week with TSC's new Chief Markets Writer Brett D. Fromson. We would be pursuing topics, I was particularly interested at that time in auctions. And some people think it still is. Now let's contrast that with today's research departments. I know of no other superbly performing hedge fund that was much a management process as Julian's. Explain: Before you left, roughly speaking, what did the stock do while you were on your around-the-world trip? He was 87. I think he's too old, and in a way, is selling out. You're talking about guys whom Julian was hiring as analysts for him and his other guys. You get margin calls on the way up, so that I was forced to sell to cover stock. I was always net long. Well, I didn't think that gambling would catch on in Atlantic City. How does it feel to share the prize with Paul Milgrom? Robert Wilson (born 4 October 1941) is an internationally acclaimed American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "this country's — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'" . It sounds like Ben Weston’s life will be anything but boring in the coming months. Robert Warne Wilson (November 3, 1926 – December 23, 2013) was an American hedge fund manager, philanthropist and art collector.. Background. I dressed up in white tie and tails. " He has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer. The only answer is that it's just one of those times in history where their services are in huge demand. Because I never wanted to get up in the morning hoping that things would be getting worse. Even when I was at a brokerage firm and was not paying for ideas, I would exchange ideas. Now you have to talk to us about the Resorts. Interview with Robert Anton Wilson copyright Gregory Bishop 1992 (also available in the collection Zen In The Art Of Close Encounters Edited by David Pursglove) Q: In the recent book Angels and Aliens, author Keith Thompson cites what he calls "metapatterns", which are repeated patterns in seemingly dipsarate phenomena which connect them.Do you entertain this concept, and if so, how? There aren't enough of them. These days, I’m 83. In some ways, it's more competitive than retailing. Julian is a very high-grade guy, so I'm sure he wouldn't have sold it to. Do you have any advice that you usually give to your students? First of all, what did you make of it? It was when you're the only game in town and it happens to work. Killing the Market is a short, fascinating read about the life and career of investor and philanthropist Robert W. Wilson. I was surprised that he did as poorly as he did and leveraged so much money, so fast. You're going to have to explain, for some of our readers, "paying for ideas." This is the point of hedging. So basically, it was a time on the Street when brokers actually were generating ... Oh, very much so. I encourage them to work on what they’re interested in and they usually just pursue it with a lot of interest in vigor because it is their own interests. I was very lucky to have such talented students. We went to the banquet and had a lovely time. I wasn’t actually trained as an economist and I hadn’t gone to a business school back in college. And therefore that would explain the big salaries for research people. It isn't as though somebody came in with a jet plane and ran existing airlines out of business. For Part 1 of the Robert Wilson chat, click here. Those stocks that are good shorts tend to be very obvious. I think it would be, at least to the best of my knowledge. Julian wasn't even in the picture. I should point out that for the year in which I had that $20 million loss, I was up 25%, in my overall account and that was a very strong year in the market. He had been in and out of Japanese stocks many times, before he'd ever been to Japan. Is there a particular teacher or mentor that really has influenced you? No, there used to be research departments, as there still are, but there would be bright young men who were institutional salesmen who would take the information from the research department and sometimes use it, and sometimes use ideas they heard from somebody else's research department. We invited him to transfer from the MBA program into the PhD program, which he did. Now, he had a lot of his people who had gone to Japan. I networked. And then a $3 million salary was a big deal. From other people. Well, it was a hedge fund, as it's now well known. -- the '60s -- and ... well, I don't think there's much secret about this, I think one reason Julian amassed so much money under management is he wanted to sell out. We spoke to economist Robert Wilson on 3 February 2021 about teaching future laureates, collaborating with fellow laureate Paul Milgrom and dealing with failure. Sequential equilibrium is a game theory method that allows to analyze the effects of asymmetric […] Now what was the zenith of the pain as Resorts went up? What kind of companies were you buying: the airlines or the manufacturers of the engines? Let's say I'm worth a hundred dollars and I couldn't buy more than a hundred dollars worth of stocks. Tales of George Soros Now, give us your evaluation of George Soros . https://www.marketfolly.com/2017/11/warren-buffett-john-templeton-robert.html This is under the old commission system. Yeah. Two things have to be kept in mind that are sort of paradoxical. You can alienate the company that could then not give you information or not do underwriting with you. I was always shooting multi-person problems. Well, yes, but it's always been. The other day I bumped into a video of rare interviews that Adam Smith did with John Templeton, Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) and Robert Wilson in the mid-1980s.. So actually, they got more leverage from the innovation with time? Yes, it was several years. All intellectuals, I think -- and I don't use that as a particularly flattering term -- but all intellectuals tend to have a pessimistic streak. In other words, the investment, the institutional salesman at that time, was in a sense like a buyer. I was fundamentally wrong, you see, and once I realized I was fundamentally wrong. I mean, the people who ran out on him, the withdrawals, aside from his losses -- he could have handled the market losses -- but the withdrawals were just breathtaking. I knew Julian from when he was still a registered rep at. There wasn't a whole lot of difference -- well, there was, depending on how you define revenues. What caused you to take a big hedge? Interview with Robert B. Wilson, February 2021 I encourage young people to just have a little bit of curiosity” We spoke to economist Robert Wilson on 3 February 2021 about teaching future laureates, collaborating with fellow laureate Paul Milgrom and dealing with failure. Wilson would be the first to point out that there are investors richer than himself; but … https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/robert-r-wilsons-interview Yeah. It's a matter of, if the market collapses, I still have a lot of money. Yet generally speaking, did you make money on your shorts? They had a gambling casino in Atlantic City? Who sets them? © 2021 TheStreet, Inc. All rights reserved. I was constantly talking with people on the phone and I don't know who mentioned it first. I admire what they’re doing. Not moneymakers. When I was doing it, it was a rather unpopular procedure, and I was able to borrow, generally. The Swedish Academy of Sciences called us, it was 1:40 in the morning. There are different kinds of scientific endeavors. I majored in mathematics and philosophy. In other words, whenever I bought a stock, I always dreamed that it would go up a 100-fold over 10 years, and he bought one after another that did that. So, rather than selling, how about buying a company worth $100? Game theory involves more than one person in a strategic situation. Days of our Lives star His fortune, approaching a billion dollars, is managed for him by a small posse of investment advisors -- some short, some long; some U.S., some overseas; some value, some growth; some large-cap, some small-cap. Coast to coast. Well, jet travel revolutionized the world, too, and there was a huge amount of money to be made in that. To cite this section To help run money, whereas now most people go directly from college or business school or whatever to the buying side. The way people fail is understandable and predictable and almost inevitable, whereas the way people succeed may never have happened, and so an intellectual is drawn towards failure, I think. Information on the avant garde visionary Robert Wilson. Well, the stock would have gone down from where I shorted it, if it had been bogus. She’s quite the entertainer. But hiking is our main thing. Several outreach organisations and activities have been developed to inspire generations and disseminate knowledge about the Nobel Prize. But the reason I didn't -- I don't know if this would interest you -- but when I retired, it seemed to me Julian was getting a little tired. I’m more of a theorist and for me it just requires this kind of unrelenting curiosity. Nowadays, we spend more time on birds. And then he -- I don't know how old Julian is now -- he's 67 or something like that, and I've always said young men and middle-aged men can make good money in the market, but not many old men can, and I define old as getting over 60. We were just very lucky. Later in my career, as I became involved in economics and game theory, I think there were these very influential older scholars that during the 1970s had a lot of influence on my thinking. What you make with what you have, what you started out with. Yes. My briefcase that has my doctoral dissertation in it has been stolen.’ It turns out that the thief’s mother read that and demanded that her son returned it and he got his dissertation back. And he said, "Bob, if they come up with one idea a year, it'll cover that office and what I pay them, and all other expenses and if it's two or three ideas ... " and Julian never paid anybody much less than half a million. Robert Wilson: It’s a rather strange circumstance. And did this phenomenon of the broker as a source of good stock ideas -- was it based simply on their fundamental research or was it based on some sort of inside knowledge that some member of their firm was going to issue a buy recommendation? But perhaps what really has fans raising their eyebrows is the fact that they looked super cozy at the "Day of Days" Event in Los Angeles in November of 2019. I used to go short a lot of stocks. I think -- what's the highest salary now on Wall Street? So I turned off the phone, but fortunately the Swedish Academy knew my wife’s cell phone number and they called her. At that very moment, it was like 10 in the morning in Stockholm so she’s trying to talk to us, but we don’t hear her very well so we’re trying to get to through to Paul and knock on the door and say, ‘You’ve won a Nobel Prize!’ So that was a lot of fun actually and this video got distributed all over the world within hours. $3 million, $4 million? Eight ... oh, billion. But the stock was moving on the expectation ... Well, then they opened the first gambling casino in Atlantic City, and they went from a 60-cent share of earnings to -- I forget, it's something like a $600,000 in one year to an understated $50 million in earnings. He was still in prime enough shape to exercise judgment, but he had all of these other people to do the gophering. We tend to forget, a lot of these people who go into research are no good. That was only one position, and I had a lot of longs that did very well. It's not just comfort. Going to Harvard was a shock for me, a cultural shock. In his day, Wilson was a peer of Warren Buffett and George Soros. So I would buy the stock through the broker who gave me the idea, and his profit would be from the commission. Robert Wilson (born October 4, 1941) is an American experimental theater stage director and playwright who has been described by The New York Times as "[America]'s – or even the world's – foremost vanguard 'theater artist. ' Was it when you were still abroad, and you finally capitulated or was it when you actually got back to the States with a position that you finally said, "Just cover the whole thing?". Another was Robert Aumann who would come every summer to Stanford and he too got a Christmas card Tiger. And out of business college or business school a story about Bengt Holmström and Paul Milgromare extremely,! Just did n't think that gambling would catch on in Atlantic City, Wilson keeps a watchful eye the... 1986 at age 59 catch on because Atlantic City was such a pit wondering, in 1926 end with you. Trip around the world one time a concern of the customer who 's causing the broker at time! 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