Nick Mulcahy

Disturbing Trends at Harley-Davidson: Why It's Time to Sell

www.marketwatch.com/ne...;siteid=yhoof

Disturbing Trends at Harley-Davidson: Why It's Time to Sell

"Much has been made of Frank H. Knight's (1921: p.20, Ch.7) famous distinction between "risk" and "uncertainty". In Knight's interpretation, "risk" refers to situations where the decision-maker can assign mathematical probabilities to the randomness which he is faced with. In contrast, Knight's "uncertainty" refers to situations when this randomness "cannot" be expressed in terms of specific mathematical probabilities. As John Maynard Keynes was later to express it:

"By `uncertain' knowledge, let me explain, I do not mean merely to distinguish what is known for certain from what is only probable. The game of roulette is not subject, in this sense, to uncertainty...The sense in which I am using the term is that in which the prospect of a European war is uncertain, or the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence...About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know." (J.M. Keynes, 1937)"

cepa.newschool.edu/het...

Buffett Misses In Hedge Fund Fees Comment

The key phrase in this article is "But let’s assume for a moment that a hedge fund produces true alpha for its 2 and 20 fee...".

As Wittgenstein wrote in a different context: "If you assume that, I'll grant you all the rest!".