Black swan investing: is it possible to prepare for the unexpected

The phrase a ‘black swan' was coined by the Latin poet Juvenal, and at that point in time no-one had ever seen one. Seventeen centuries later, a Dutch explorer sailed up a river in newly discovered Australia to find to his amazement - a black swan. The term was popularised in financial circles by Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor and former Wall Street trader, who used it describe an event which falls beyond the bounds of predictability and leads to unforecastable consequences. Hard, in fact impossible to predict, such instances include: a natural disaster such as the 26 December 2004 ...