the.com/hedge
a wall that breathes, hides, and politely refuses to pick a side
means A row of closely planted shrubs forming a boundary or barrier, or — figuratively — a way of protecting yourself against loss or commitment by keeping your options open.
from From Old English 'hecg,' a leafy boundary, sharing roots with words across the Germanic family for enclosure and fencing — a cousin of 'haw' (as in hawthorn, the classic hedging shrub) and likely related to the same idea behind German 'Hecke.' The financial and verbal senses grew from the literal one: to 'hedge a bet' was originally to fence it in, hemming in your risk the way a thorny boundary hems in a field. To be evasive — to 'hedge' your words — borrows the same image of refusing to leave open ground.
- oldest living
- some British hedges predate the Norman Conquest
- dating trick
- count woody species to estimate a hedge's age
- finance steal
- hedge funds borrow the word from risk-spreading bets
- maze maker
- Hampton Court's hedge maze has fooled visitors since 1700
- wildlife hotel
- hedgerows shelter dormice, birds, and countless insects
berkshire hathaway — warren buffett's conglomerate that famously avoided hedging strategies, gaining 20%+ annual returns since 1965
renaissance technologies — jim simons' quantitative fund that used sophisticated hedging algorithms to achieve 30%+ returns for decades
long-term capital management — nobel laureates' hedge fund that collapsed in 1998 despite complex hedging models, requiring $3.6b government bailout