Standard Deviations is pleased to welcome Meredith Jones, award-winning author of Women of the Street and an internationally recognized expert on women and investing. She was named one of Inc. magazine’s “17 Inspiring Women To Watch in 2017” and a Distinguished Author by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018. She has been a regular columnist for Institutional Investor and is a contributor for Market Watch. In this episode, Meredith tackles Wall Street's diversity problem while making th...
Oct 04, 2018•38 min•Ep. 43
In this episode of Standard Deviations, Eric McDermott, a Managing Partner at Pacific Advisors, Financial Specialist and marketing guru breaks down the steps investors can take to operate from a “risk first” mentality. Learn fascinating facts about the origins of insurance as an industry and how to overcome overconfidence en route to having candid conversations about risk. Eric’s book recommendation: Man’s Search for Meaning Follow up with Eric: http://www.pacificadvisors.com/team/eric-mcdermott...
Sep 27, 2018•41 min•Ep. 42
This week on Standard Deviations, Dr. Crosby speaks with Brian Portnoy, Ph.D., CFA, an expert at simplifying the complex world of money. In his two books, The Investor's Paradox and The Geometry of Wealth, he tackles the challenges of not only making better investment decisions but also how money figures in to a joyful life. He is currently the Director of Investment Education at Virtus Investment Partners and has spent the last 25 years as educator, investor, and strategist. He holds a doctorat...
Sep 25, 2018•42 min•Ep. 41
In today's episode we run through the six signs of a financial bubble.
Sep 07, 2018•5 min•Ep. 40
In this episode, Dr. Crosby asserts that owning our personal mediocrity is paradoxically the key to personal exceptionalism. Huh? Listen in to hear why owning that you're not that great could be the key to greatness.
Sep 03, 2018•10 min•Ep. 39
Investment diversification is widely-accepted best practice for financial reasons but the psychology of not putting all of your eggs in one basket is at least as powerful. Listen in to understand the psychology of winning by not losing.
Aug 31, 2018•11 min•Ep. 38
A debate rages about the impact of emotion on investment decision-making. Some believe it to be a source of signal where others just see noise. In today's episode, we look at some of the research around investing and emotion and suggest that exciting investing is often bad investing.
Aug 27, 2018•10 min•Ep. 37
In most endeavors, staying informed is a positive. So why is it that people who watch less financial news tend to be outperformed than the truly plugged in when considering investing? Listen in to understand how to consume financial media without being consumed by the hype.
Aug 24, 2018•8 min•Ep. 36
The stock market can be extremely volatile, but with a little understanding of market history and dynamics, you can navigate its ups and downs with greater ease.
Jun 29, 2018•14 min•Ep. 35
On this week's episode we review the evidence around whether or not to hire a financial advisor and offer ten questions for separating great advisors from the not so great.
Jun 15, 2018•16 min•Ep. 34
Investing has been described as simple but not easy. By listening to this podcast, you will understand the 12 steps necessary to create lasting wealth. The implementation? That's up to you.
Jun 08, 2018•16 min•Ep. 33
In this episode, we take on the age old questions: "Do birds of a feather flock together?" or "Do opposites attract?" We also make the bold statement that your friends are lame and are keeping you from being as smart and well-rounded as you ought to be.
Jun 01, 2018•8 min•Ep. 32
Is investing a game of luck or skill? In this episode, we examine the three criteria needed to distinguish a game of luck from skill and find that financial markets land somewhere in the middle. We then discuss the implications of this finding for selecting appropriate investment vehicles.
May 26, 2018•16 min•Ep. 31
It's human nature to worry about low probability/high salience things and ignore threats that are far more immediate and pervasive. Tune in to learn why and what to do about it.
May 18, 2018•11 min•Ep. 30
Feedback loops exist in relationships, nature and especially in financial markets. In today's episode, we examine how capital markets operate in boom and bust cycles due to our subjective perceptions.
May 15, 2018•15 min•Ep. 29
Can you trust your gut? Well...sometimes. Today on the podcast we look at the two conditions that must be met in order for intuition to be useful. Even the best-informed intuition is only as good as the milieu in which it finds itself and environmental cues remain the best predictor of whether or not intuition can be trusted. In the absence of a certain level of predictability and rapid feedback, neither of which are present in financial markets, intuition lacks soil fertile enough to take root....
May 14, 2018•12 min•Ep. 28
Listen in this week to learn: Why positivity brings about more lasting change than negativity How making lists of "not to do" can have a paradoxical effect Why labeling ourselves and others can blind us to the true state of things
May 07, 2018•17 min•Ep. 27
It is often assumed that there is a positive, linear relationship between information and market efficiency. It stands to reason, at least to a point, that the more publicly available information we have about a security, the greater our ability to accurately price that security. But is it possible that too much information can be as bad for efficiency as too little? As reported in Scientific American, the amount of data that we produce doubles each year. To put it more concretely, in 2016, huma...
Apr 29, 2018•21 min•Ep. 26
We’re all familiar with the term “keeping up with the Joneses” but it’s doubtful that we understand just how deeply ingrained this is in our concept of wealth and success. Each year, a Gallup poll asks Americans to determine “What is the smallest amount of money a family of four needs to get along in this community?” Gallup finds that the answers to this question moves up in line with average incomes of the respondents. A recent Princeton study set out to answer the age-old question, “Can money ...
Apr 23, 2018•16 min•Ep. 25
Momentum has existed for hundreds of years and has persisted for two decades post discovery. This sort of staying power in capital markets full of hungry arbitrageurs is always the mark of human psychology. Many experts consider momentum to not just be a factor but THE factor. Fama and French don’t mince words, “The premier market anomaly is momentum. Stocks with low returns over the past year tend to have low returns for the next few months, and stocks with high past returns tend to have high f...
Apr 16, 2018•13 min•Ep. 24
In this episode we look answer: How do financial bubbles form? How likely is a bubble to burst? How can I know a bubble when I see one?
Apr 09, 2018•16 min•Ep. 23
What seldom-uttered phrase can make you wealthier and more likeable? Why did a bank robber use lemonade to commit crimes? Why don't dumb people know how dumb they are?
Apr 03, 2018•12 min•Ep. 22
Your brain is a miracle unrivaled by even the most sophisticated technology, but it is a miracle equipped for a different time and place. After millennia of fighting famine, war and pestilence, we now live in a society of greater and greater ease that is increasingly left to fight psychological battles. Obesity will kill more people this year than hunger. Suicide claims more lives annually than war, terrorism and violent crime combined. Your brain is still fighting a war won eons ago and you mus...
Mar 26, 2018•13 min•Ep. 21
Let me ask you a question, “Do you like laugh tracks?” Didn’t think so. If laugh tracks are so universally disliked, why do Hollywood executives continue to include them? These executives understand something that we may not; however irksome canned laughter may be, it provides valuable social cues to viewers. Research has repeatedly shown that laugh tracks cause viewers to laugh longer and harder and to rate the viewing experience as more enjoyable. In fact, laugh tracks have been shown to be mo...
Mar 19, 2018•10 min•Ep. 20
How many decisions would you guess that you make in a given day? Take a second, mentally walk through your day and hazard a guess. Most people I ask this question land somewhere around 100, which is way off – try 35,000. That’s right, you make 35,000 decisions per day. Canonical models of decision-making deal with two types of decisions – certain (i.e., with a known set of alternatives with certain outcomes) and uncertain (just the opposite). In theory, decisions made under conditions of certain...
Mar 12, 2018•13 min•Ep. 19
If bees organize by innate mandate and chimps through tight-knit social interactions, the miracle of human ascendance in the animal kingdom owes to a penchant for behaving in accordance with social narratives. To put it bluntly, we act as if the stories we make up are real. As Harari writes in the magisterial Sapiens, “As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled.” A monkey can say, “There is a caribou by the river” but cou...
Mar 06, 2018•13 min•Ep. 18
We’re all familiar with the term “keeping up with the Joneses” but it’s doubtful that we understand just how deeply ingrained this is in our concept of success and how the neurological processes we’ve touched on here contribute. Each year, a Gallup poll asks Americans to determine “What is the smallest amount of money a family of four needs to get along in this community?” Gallup finds that the answers to this question moves up in line with average incomes of the respondents. “Enough”, it seems,...
Feb 28, 2018•13 min•Ep. 17
How to Avoid Financial Scams Stephen Greenspan is a psychologist and author of the Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. Greenspan’s book outlines notable instances of gullibility including the Trojan Horse, the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the bad science surrounding cold fusion. Most of the book focuses on anecdotes, but the final chapter sets forth the anatomy of being fooled and attributes it to some combination of the following factors: • ...
Feb 20, 2018•9 min•Ep. 16
There are three things that intelligent investors must understand if they are to truly inoculate themselves against the fear peddled by the profiteers of peril: corrections and bear markets are a common part of any investment lifetime, they represent a long-term buying opportunity and a systematic process is required to take advantage of them. A “correction” is defined as a 10% drop in stock prices, whereas a “bear market” is defined as a 20% drop. Both definitions are entirely arbitrary, but in...
Feb 17, 2018•5 min•Ep. 15
We rely on the crowd to do everything from run our governments to help us select a place to eat, but does the wisdom of the crowd apply to the stock market? By examining the anatomy of a good decision set forth by Richard Thaler we arrive at the conclusion that crowds are wise in some respects but can lead us astray in others.
Oct 13, 2017•12 min•Ep. 14
