The punchline is that Niederhoffer blew up (for the second time, thereby fulfilling his own definition of a hoodoo):

Last fall, Niederhoffer sold a large number of options, betting that the markets would be quiet, and they were, until out of nowhere two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. “I was exposed. It was nip and tuck.” Niederhoffer shook his head, because there was no way to have anticipated September 11th. “That was a totally unexpected event.”

I’m not going to recapitulate Gladwell’s article here, but it’s well worth reading in its entirety. As an aside, Niederhoffer’s The Education of a Speculator is also an excellent read. It is interesting to compare Niederhoffer’s exhortation to “test everything that can be tested” against Taleb’s “naive empiricist,” but I’ll leave that for another day. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of Taleb’s philosophy is his attack on “epistemic arrogance” and its application to value investment. As I have said before, I believe there are several problems with the received wisdom on value investment, and this is one worthy of further exposition.