He soon looped in Universa’s quantitative team to run projections. It wasn’t good. One day, he swung by the office to take a walk with chief investment officer Mark Spitznagel and chief operating officer Brandon Yarckin along the waterfront. On the way, Taleb, sweating in his professorial jacket in Miami’s 27 degree heat, spotted a penny on the pavement in front of a parked steamroller – and picked it up, laughing at the inside joke about risk-oblivious hedge fund managers snatching pennies before the proverbial steamroller. Later that night, they huddled over dinner at Brasserie Brickell Key, an Italian restaurant...