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Black swans really didn’t swim into global consciousness until the late summer of 2008 when the frazzled pieces of the global economy completely frayed, like the rope holding a piano dangling above a busy city street in an old silent film.

But, Nassim Taleb had spotted the creature in 2007, writing about how sudden, outlying events affect the financial markets in Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable. He mentions September 11 and stock market crashes as Black Swan-type events.

Whether any of the events were truly unpredictable–or just extremely complex, isn’t the point of this piece. What intrigues me now is, if we accept the premise that a Black Swan is unpredictable, can a reverse Black Swan be created?

In other worlds, if a series of seemingly random and unconnected events are behind a stock market crash, it would be foolhardy to believe that a group of government officials could somehow engineer a stock market rally.

This seems to be the goals of a flurry of government initiatives, taxes, bills, and programs–from cap and trade policies to internet affiliate taxes.

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If you’re not sure what the black swan is, check out the book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Essentially (and I’m vastly over-simplifying), Taleb’s point is that your brain is fooled by randomness and that you must be able to recognize the large-scale events that can cause massive and chaotic change in the market.

Taleb refers to these events as “black swans,” based on the notion that everyone believed that only black swans existed, when, lo and behold a species of black swans was discovered it.

To simplify this even more: S**t happens.

The question for me, since I’m interested in how technology can predict asset movements, is: how can we predict a black swan.

I don’t think you need to. The problem isn’t that there is an agnosticism about black swans; the problem is when investors cling to white swans and aren’t nimble enough to jump on the long neck of the black swan.

I believe that technology is suitable adapted–or could be adapted–to not only recognize a black swan moment, but also move assets and change positions into its flight path.

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