Where are you getting those numbers from? The most reliable numbers I could find where in this WSJ article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118429436433665637

which claims that while his fund may have under-performed other funds over its lifetime and suffered a couple of years of modest losses during a period of stable growth, it did make massive returns during the dot.com crash which was kind of the funds raison d'etre.

Only LPs have true access to fund returns but there are a lot of examples of falsehoods being claimed by Taleb et al;

http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-before-you-invest-in-nas...

Plus the fact that he started an new fund in 2009 that essentially was relying on hyperinflation to make their returns;

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124380234786770027#mod=testMod

That seems to be an error on GQ's part, not Taleb's.

See http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/06/30/the-taleb-g...

It is actually not Taleb's fund but Mark Spitznagel's an it is doing phenominally well

I suspect people who've read Talib make a lot of money in prediction markets this year from people who just read Nate Silver

Have you got more info on that? I'd be interested in following it up.