Black Swans, A Wild Goose Chase

From the Black Monday of October 19, 1987, to the September 11 attacks: When the seemingly impossible comes to pass, has a massive impact and seems to be predictable in retrospect, then we have faced a "Black swan." IESE Prof. Javier Estrada, who has been studying this phenomenon for the past two years, turns his attention to emerging equity markets to measure the effect of outliers on investment performance. How do investors know when to be in or out of the market? Can they ever really anticipate these outliers? As in nature, events defined as black swans are rare, but successful long-term investment in emerging markets through market timing, he finds, is even rarer.