As previously discussed with regard to CDOs, pricing derivatives is not easy. It was a great leap forward for economics as a science in 1973 when Robert Merton, working on a model proposed by Fischer Black and Merton Schoals, published an (arguably) novel model for pricing options. For this, Merton and Schoals later received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics (Black was not eligible, as he had passed away). It is safe to say, then, that Long Term Capital management had some high-caliber minds on its Board of Directors. A hedge fund formed in 1994 by John Meriwether, a former head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers [10], the fund had over a billion dollars in starting capital. Their game was arbitrage: capitalizing on changes in relations between different securities. The value of a 29-year T-bill and a 30-year T-bill should
eventually converge, so LTCM shorted the lower-yield bond and went long on the other, using massive leverage to turn a profit on a tiny margin. A wide variety of bets went badly, and after two years of 40%-plus annual profits, LTCM lost billions of dollars on very short order and had to be bailed out to avoid causing a liquidity crisis for the whole market.