In theory a "black swan" as first described in AD 82 depicted a creature that did not exist. However, in 1790 a black swan was discovered and therefore proved the existence of the improbable. Black swans are actually common in the wetlands of south-western and eastern Australia. It is the official state emblem of western Australia and is depicted on its flag.

In his 2007 book "The Black Swan", Nicholas Taleb used the bird to explain that the belief that "all swans are white" is based on the limits of our experience. In other words, some occurrences are unpredictable because they deviate so far beyond what is normally expected. They are rare but when

they occur they have massive positive or negative consequences. Examples are 9/11, the Internet, the impact of Google, the US sub-prime crises and other such events. We can protect against what we know, but not against what we don't know. "Black Swan" events are random and unexpected. They are about unknown unknowns.

"Gray Swans" are events that we can take into account, for example earthquakes, best-selling books and stock market crashes, but it is not possible to completely figure out their properties and produce exact calculations.

At GraySwan Investments we do not intend to predict the unpredictable. Our investment and risk advisory services empower investors to avoid unintended risks and their consequences in their investment portfolios. Our objective is to expose these unintended risks through our unique performance, risk and attribution analysis as well as research based qualitative insights and due diligence approach.

Our infrastructure and analytical platform equip our clients to model and understand the impact of historical and potential future extreme events on their investments. We aim to focus more on the consequences of extreme events and not the likelihood of them happening.