The randomness of world events is really working out for Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Not only did the NYU professor's book, The Black Swan, come out last year, pretty much at exactly the right time for a book forecasting doom in the markets, enabling it to become a bestseller and securing for Taleb a reported $4 million advance for his next book, but now the hedge fund he helped start, Universa Investments, which bets on unlikely market events based on themes in the book, is one of the only hedge funds out there to have reported gains. "We're discovering the fragility of the financial system," Taleb told the Journal this morning. Incidentally, the Amazon ranking of The Black Swan is at 72 today, up from 152,723 last week.

October Pain Was 'Black Swan' Gain [WSJ]
Related: The Fearmongers of Finance