Bloomberg Television · Oct 6, 2026
With Nassim Taleb, Distinguished Scientist at Universa Investments and author of The Black Swan
Apple started the personal computer and then almost went out of business, Nassim Taleb said, and IBM took the market and almost went out of business too.
A class of investors is buying companies linked to AI on the view that AI will change the world. Taleb said that is probably the most naive thinking an investor can do, because the companies that profit from a world-changing technology are rarely the ones that pioneered it.
"What happened is that technology companies are threatened by other technology companies." — Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb, Distinguished Scientist at Universa Investments, on Bloomberg Television, wrote The Black Swan and, with Universa's founder, began hedging client portfolios against market crashes more than 20 years ago.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 3 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
The stock market keeps rising because it attracts money that stays, and that is how it builds up risk before it falls
Universa does not bet on the market going down; Taleb said it watches whether risk is increasing
Investing in AI firms because AI will change the world is probably the most naive thinking there is, Taleb said
Apple and IBM both almost went out of business after leading the personal computer
Nobody knows what will make AI more efficient, so the companies valued as winners may not be the ultimate winners
Most of the companies at the origin of the web boom went bankrupt, and only a few survived
1. Stocks Are a Trap
The interviewer, speaking with Taleb at the Greenwich Economic Forum, asked where he stands on the stock market rally.
Taleb said it is a mistake to think only in first-order terms. He called the stock market a trap: an investor who shorts it because of some event finds the two are not linked.
He said the market keeps rising because the money it attracts stays put, and that is what builds the risk
"The stock market attracts money. That's sticky. So it's going to keep rising but eventually it's going to fall from there because it builds up a lot of risks, but in a very counterintuitive way." — Nassim Taleb
Universa watches risk rather than betting on a fall
Taleb said Universa is a volatility fund, not a bear fund that bets on falling prices.
"So in other words we don't think in terms of the market will go down. We think in terms of risks increases." — Nassim Taleb
When risk increases, he said, prices typically move the opposite way for a while, in the direction that hurts people.
"So that's the story of the stock market." — Nassim Taleb
