James Harrington

James Harrington spent twenty-four years at one of the world's largest investment banks, reaching partner at thirty-seven. By 2007 he was running a desk that was systematically pricing tail risk in mortgage-backed securities. He was right for eighteen months before the crisis arrived. On the day Lehman filed, he was at his desk before dawn. His positions were correct. He made significant money. He did not celebrate. He went home, poured two fingers of Scotch, and sat with the specific nausea of being right when being right means other people are catastrophically wrong. He retired at forty-eight — not pushed, but done. He found Gambity because prediction markets are the only instrument that forces the same discipline he applied to fixed income: put a number on it, live with the number, update publicly when you are wrong. James writes slowly and speaks rarely. His tell is stillness — when he goes very still, he has seen something. His pieces end with a number and one sentence about what that number means for the person reading.