Decision Nerds

Send us Fan Mail 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐈 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫… ...heard a client say, “I’m disappointed, you made that point too easy for everyone to understand”. Unsurprisingly, anyone who works in the field of investment or consulting will have heard many complaints the other way around. You may have been the culprit, or maybe had to present with THAT colleague who is incredibly smart, but who struggles to get their point...

Send us Fan Mail Howard Marks – navigating the crisis - creed, preparation and control What kind of mindset and organisational culture does it take to survive and to thrive in market turmoil? Let’s be frank, there are a vanishingly small number of people who have navigated multiples crises successfully and have something interesting and reflective to say it about it. One person who does is Howard...

Send us Fan Mail The Disruptor in Chief’s blizzard of executive orders, tariffs and foreign policy positions and his propensity to change them is making life difficult for investors and clients.    Things look and feel uncertain, perhaps more so than in living memory.  In this bite size episode, we discuss the science and practicalities of dealing with uncertainty.   The Electric shock study refer...

Send us Fan Mail As the wordly philosophers of Coldplay suggest, getting what you want, but not what you need, might leave you in need of fixing.  Leaps in investment platform technology give investors more information, more choice and the ability to act more quickly and easily. We want that, but is it what we need? As Joe points out, many of the positive developments in tech are double-edge sword...

Send us Fan Mail Joe doesn’t like performance fees - but why? Are they innately problematic or just badly and perhaps cynically implemented in the mutual fund industry? In this bitesize episode, we get into alignment of interests, bad design and investor behaviour. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁? Performance fees are most often discussed in the context of alignment and risk sharing. Joe rai...

Send us Fan Mail We all have things in our working lives that drive us insane. Anyone who regularly listens to the pod will know that there are a few subjects that consistently raise Joe’s blood pressure to unhealthy levels… In the interest of Joe's and our future guest’s wellbeing, we wanted to find a way of dealing with these issues productively.  Our solution, Decision Nerds: Room 101  Roo...

Send us Fan Mail If you’ve been around the block, you will likely have seen some eye-rolling use of evidence during meetings. Evidence can be used badly for many reasons; a misunderstanding of what conclusions can be drawn from it, or perhaps it has been cherry-picked to support a particular position. In this episode, we unpick these issues with Professor Alex Edmans of London Business School. Ale...

Send us Fan Mail Lying – it’s something that all humans do. Most of the lies we tell are small and harmless. But deceptive behaviour in the investment industry lowers trust and increases costs and complexity. We are deceptive for many reasons and one of them is that we can get away with it. This is because, despite what we might believe, most of us are pretty terrible at spotting lying – including...

Send us Fan Mail 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿? 1. Hire a manager after a period of strong performance. 2. Watch in horror as you don’t experience that outcome, maybe the opposite. 3. Spend a huge amount of time and emotional labour deciding on whether your initial thesis was wrong, something has changed at the manager, or with market dynamics. 4. After sucking up...

Send us Fan Mail Thinking and talking about failure can be tough, especially when it’s us who’s failing.  But it’s important for us as individuals and investment teams to find a way to do this in an effective manner that allows us to both learn and evolve. In this episode of Decisions Nerds…  - Joe pits his inner Brian Blessed against an AI auto-editor  - We examine Joe’s framework for thinking ab...

Send us Fan Mail We downed some eggnog and decided to record an impromptu Christmas special. We have a chat about how insights from behavioural science might help the festive holidays proceed more smoothly:  😂  Why Joe's team might think (in his own words) that he’s an ‘egotistical a*&hole’. 😧  A simple way to feel better about Christmas (but you might not like it). 😠  The nudges that...

Send us Fan Mail Following the publication of a new book, 'The Fund', Ray Dalio and Bridgewater have been getting attention for all the wrong reasons. The book alleges a toxic culture where the reality of day-to-day life doesn’t match that described in Dalio’s book, ‘Principles’.  In this episode of Decision Nerds, we dive into the sludge and extract some key points that are relevant for...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discuss how we can make better forecasts with Professor Paul Goodwin. We tackle everything from the techniques available, to human problems around understanding, bias and incentives. See the chapter headings for full details. Notes Philip Tetlock's book is Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction A paper that describes the key concepts can be fou...

Send us Fan Mail Does fear of getting things wrong stop you from making decisions?  If so, you’re not alone. Regret can have a profound impact on our choices.  In this short episode, we unpack the challenges, discuss some solutions and use the timely case of thematic investment funds as a case in point. We tackle:    The psychological nature of regret – why it can be useful, but also harmful. How...

Send us Fan Mail A bitesize episode with some thoughts from this year's Glastonbury festival. We tackle: Lana Del Rey - the need to understand who's got the power (literally in this case) Van Halen reconsidered - from divas to behavioural gurus via brown M&Ms Elton John - the peak-end rule and what set lists can teach us about being remembered. 

Send us Fan Mail It is incredibly easy to be cynical when we hear businesses talk about culture. At one point or another, most of us have shuffled into a room with colleagues to experience a PowerPoint presentation on our firm's culture. They can often be (a) generic, anodyne and marketing-led, or (b) aspirational, unrealistic and not reflective of leadership and/or street-level behaviour. We...

Send us Fan Mail Our guest today, Tom Gosling, is a committed and thoughtful supporter of D&I.  He's a practitioner turned academic who helps build bridges between researchers, policymakers and those at the coal face.  He has an interesting take on some important strategic and practical D&I issues that often get no, or very little, air time. If you have any interest in D&I and how...

Send us Fan Mail F&^% ups – how they happen, how they’re judged and how we can sort them At some point in life, all of us will make some kind of toe-curling mistake. In our work lives, we’re going to make smaller ones, or have to manage or deal with colleagues' errors on an ongoing basis. Understanding how errors happen and how they can be managed is important. But we also want to think a...

Send us Fan Mail All investment decision-makers need feedback to improve. The key question is how can we give feedback in a way that allows people to meaningfully engage with it and ultimately change unproductive behaviour.  In this episode, we chat with Clare Flynn Levy, CEO of Essentia Analytics.  The core of Essentia's business is using tech to help investors understand their behaviour.  A...