WSJ Reviews New Book on LTCM: When Nobel Laureates, Leverage, and Flawed Models Collide

A WSJ review (Aug. 4, 2026) revisits Long-Term Capital Management's 1998 collapse. The fund, staffed by what WSJ calls possibly the highest-IQ team ever — including two Nobel laureates — foundered when Value-at-Risk models built on historical data missed simultaneous correlated losses. The pattern recurred in 2008's structured-credit collapse, raising the question: have risk models truly improved, or merely been re-trusted?