Despite appearances, finding these "nickels" was anything bur easy. Long-Term was searching for pairs of trades-or often, multiple pairs-thar were "balanced" enough to be safe but unbalanced in one or two very particular aspects, so as to offer a potential for profit. Put differently, in any given strategy, Long-Term typically wanted exposure to one or two risk factors-but no more. In a common example-yield-curve trades-interest rates in a given country might he oddly out of line for a certain duration of debt. For instance, medium-term rates might he far higher than short-term rates and almost as high as long-term rates. Long-Term would concoct a series of arbitrages betting on this bulge to disappear.