much too much televised football , you will often hear a particular lament. Whatever happened to the playmakers, the socks-rolled-down mavericks whose individualism could alter the course of a match? The question is invariably posed by grizzled ex-pros. They are saddened but also puzzled by the systematising of the modern game. Players go through a series of prescribed moves when they get the ball. Passages of play are minutely choreographed.
To understand why, go back to the 1970s when a first wave of macro traders, including George Soros and Michael Marcus, made their names and a lot of their money. The end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates created opportunities. There were newly volatile currencies to wager on. Inflation also surged. This, along with advances in the pricing of commodity futures and options, spurred interest in the trading of grains, beans and metals.
Mr Bacon was on that trade, too. Earlier, he profited from the stockmarket crash of 1987 by piling into the safety of bonds, which rallied in the aftermath. He also made a tidy sum by predicting the impact on oil prices and the stockmarket of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.