Trillion Dollar Bet
The film tells the fascinating story of the invention of the Black-Scholes Formula, a mathematical Holy Grail that forever altered the world of finance and earned its creators the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics
In 1973, three brilliant economists, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, and Robert Merton, discovered a mathematical Holy Grail that revolutionized modern finance. The elegant formula they unleashed upon the world was sparse and deceptively simple, yet it led to the creation of a multi-trillion dollar industry. Their bold ideas earned Scholes and Merton a Nobel Prize (Black died before the prize was awarded) and attracted the elite of Wall Street.
In 1993, Scholes and Merton joined forces with John Meriweather, the legendary bond trader of Salomon Brothers. With 13 other partners, they launched a new hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, which promised to use mathematical models to make investors tremendous amounts of money. Their money machines reaped fantastic profits, until their theories collided with reality, and sent the company spiraling out of control. The crisis threatened to bring markets around the world to the brink of collapse.
Join NOVA in the quest to turn finance into a science. Plus, trace the little-known history of predicting financial markets and go to work with some successful modern traders who rely on intuition as well as mathematical models.
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