Take portfolio insurance, in which investors use "stock index futures contracts to offset positions in the stock market to limit their losses to a predetermined proportion of their original investment.... It is one of the ironies of this complex computerized age ... that an approach designed to insure against more losses than they are willing to accept is seen by some as contributing to the very volatility that makes the markets so treacherous for so many investors.

QUESTION: This irony suggests an angle worth investigating: could risk-management tools systemically amplify the very risks they hedge against? Worth tracing how portfolio insurance contributed to the 1987 crash.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 144