Finance

A 17th-century Mughal emperor mandated that all large transactions be paid in uncut diamonds

Modern banking began when London goldsmiths started lending out more gold than they held

Human brains consistently value certainty far more than the mathematical probability of a win

The psychological pain of losing money is twice as powerful as the joy of gaining it

People treat found money and earned salary as different currencies with different spending rules

A single mathematical formula enabled the explosion of the trillion-dollar global options market

Financial models based on normal distributions often fail to account for rare catastrophic events

The first quantitative hedge fund was founded by a mathematician who mastered card counting

The Code of Hammurabi established the first laws protecting bank depositors from theft

Barcelona established the first public bank to facilitate trade without charging prohibited interest

The Medici Bank bypassed religious bans on interest by disguising loans as currency exchanges

The world&#039;s first paper currency collapsed after the Song dynasty printed too much of it

A 16th-century banking family built a social housing project that still charges medieval rent

Automatically enrolling employees in savings plans increases participation rates from 20 to 90 percent

Investors are statistically more likely to sell winning stocks while holding onto losing ones