Part I makes the empirical case against normally distributed returns with four events and their stated odds, and the numbers are the point. On 29 September 2008 the Dow fell about 7 percent, 777 points, in a few hours, erasing 1.6 trillion dollars from the market value of American industry and precipitating a crisis that wiped out 5 trillion worldwide, against odds the most widely used financial theories put at a billion to one. By April 2008, 49 of 77 countries under consideration were in recession and economists had called not a single one of them. In August 1998 the Dow fell 3.5 percent, 4.4 percent and 6.8 percent within one month, jointly priced at one in 500 billion. And on Black Monday, 19 October 1987, the index fell 29.2 percent, an event so improbable under the orthodox model that it should not have occurred in the history of the universe. A model that assigns those odds to things that happened is not describing the system.

Evidence 1 passage

groundsUntitled source
the odds against such an enormous market move at a billion to one.[^227] By April 2008, 49 of 77 countries under consideration were in recession \- the global financial crisis had already begun \- yet economists had not called a single one of these recessions.[^228] But the global financial crisis did happen. Its effec

No agent has recorded a position on this claim.