Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby

Tune in to hear: What critical point do the formal ways of measuring financial anxiety miss out on? What are some of the meaningful qualitative differences between how financial anxiety may present for different clients?  What are 5 different archetypes of anxious clients you might encounter?  What is one way that advisors can address clients’ anxiety-driven avoidance? How can advisors h...

Tune in to hear: What did Dr. Rosier see in his clinical work that convinced him that the way in which people handle money is, at its core, partially a brain problem? What does clinical neuropsychology add to the behavioral finance picture when we are trying to understand why people do what they do with money and why they can know the right thing but still fail to do the right thing? What is one p...

Tune in to hear: Why did the writing of Peter’s new book end in his family getting a new puppy? Why does Peter believe that the perfect portfolio is the one that best suits the particular individual who owns it? Why does he think portfolio construction should be centered around human behavior instead of what is mathematically optimal? What are some of the most effective guardrails advisors can imp...

Tune in to hear: What did Betterment’s 2026 Retail Investor Survey uncover about Gen Z investors and sports betting and why is this finding so significant?  Do Gen Z’s financial prospects look more promising than Gen X and the millennials, according to the data? Are they more or less likely to contribute to workplace retirement programs? Why is the dopamine hit of sports betting, and similar...

Tune in to hear: What did Ryan see about the way people were managing private investments that made him think his company Arch needed to exist? How does Ryan think the constant feedback and news around public markets affects investors and can the relative quiet of private markets give us a different experience from a behavioral perspective? What can the longer time horizon of private markets teach...

Tune in to hear: What is one thing that the investment community has made more complicated than it needs to be, in John’s opinion? How does an oldschool, value and dividend focused shop like John’s get folks interested in this style of investing that is so well supported but seems to almost be forgotten in the present day? Has John found that when clients have an income element to their portfolio,...

Tune in to hear: If Matt could take one lesson from his former life as a therapist and impart it to all the advisors that he serves, what would that lesson be? What compelled Matt to write his new book, Shut the F Up and Listen , and why did he think this message was particularly important in this moment we are in? The impulse to listen in order to respond, or to listen in order to solve a problem...

Tune in to hear: Where’s the current interest and momentum in Behavioral Finance and where does Jay see it going next? Why are investors so bad at affective forecasting (i.e. imagining how they’ll actually behave during a major market downturn)? How can we get investors and advisors to “buy an umbrella when the sun is shining?” Why does taking action during market downturns feel so right and what...

Tune in to hear: Why do we need to begin to think about wealth in more qualitative terms with the upcoming Great Wealth Transfer? How can we better prepare heirs to understand their newfound relationship with wealth? Why does successful, multi-generational wealth preservation depend on more than investment performance? According to studies, what factors are key for the preservation of wealth acros...

Tune in to hear: If markets are as mad as Alex and Dr. Crosby suggest, why do we still see that most active managers have such a difficult time trying to beat markets? When Alex tells stories about how sporting events or the weather might move the market, is there any signal there for the average investor or is he simply making a broader point about how our emotions may color the way we think abou...

Tune in to hear: Does Adam believe that most people have a money problem, or a meaning problem that money simply reveals? What are some signs that someone is trying to solve a meaning problem with money and what would Adam counsel them to do instead if they saw this in themselves? How does Adam define financial freedom in a more nuanced way than the layman’s concept of financial freedom? What is s...

Tune in to hear: What is the biggest lie advisors tell themselves about why their growth may be stagnating or slower than they might like? What would Kendra say to advisors who are casting a really wide net about why they should drill down and create a more bespoke marketing funnel? When Kendra is looking at an advisor’s social media channels, what are some signs that their approach is effective a...

Tune in to hear: What does the financial services industry get wrong about the role marketing and sales should play in an organization? How does Potomac approach marketing differently than other firms? If Christopher had to distill his marketing ethos down to 2-3 principles, what would those be? Why does Christopher believe that it is just as important to repel people as it is to attract them with...

Tune in to hear: Why does Dr. Whelan think that purpose is something we build rather than something we discover? Also why, as a culture, do we view purpose more like an epiphany rather than something we actively construct? How are happiness and purpose distinguished and how should we optimize for one or the other? How did Plato’s philosophy separate the two and did he believe they were mutually ex...

Tune in to hear: Why do tweens seem to fall between the cracks, in terms of products, advice and services aimed at them, and why did Jamie focus on this niche demographic for her new book? From a developmental perspective, what should parents and caregivers understand about how 10-14 year olds think, learn and make decisions? When thinking about jobs for teenagers, how should parents think about j...

Tune in to hear: Why does Cullen argue in his new book that there is no perfect portfolio and argues that we should be worrying more about process? How do we begin to move our clientele from this search for a silver bullet to start thinking about their portfolios in a more systematic, bespoke way? Why does Cullen believe that advisors should match assets to future liabilities rather than just chas...

Tune in to hear: Why did Derick Kinney leave behind his career as a financial advisor to become an author and public speaker? What does Derick think money reveals about people that we may be slow to admit? How does Derick suggest people get started with philanthropy if they’ve been hesitant for whatever reason? As people try to reorient their relationship with money, what are some rain clouds or o...

Tune in to hear: What gives money such immense emotional power over us? Does Neil think that some of the problems people have with money come from them trying to treat it as this utilitarian thing rather than tapping into the deeper subtext of it? What does Neil think is the biggest mismatch between the brain we’ve inherited from our ancestral predecessors and the world we find ourselves navigatin...

Tune in to hear: How can we make the lessons of market history feel salient to present day investors? Is the South Sea Bubble Ben’s favorite historical anecdote around investing and money? What is the “now show Japan” mindset and how does it steer people awry? Both from the advisor perspective, and also the end-investor perspective, how do we get people to realize the value of doing nothing and pa...

This week on Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby, Dr. Crosby is joined by Clare Flynn Levy, CEO and Founder of Essentia Analytics. Prior to founding Essentia, Clare spent 10 years as a fund manager, both active equity (running over $1B of pension funds for Deutsche Asset Management) and hedge (as founder and CIO of Avocet Capital Management, a specialist tech fund manager). She ultimately “...

Tune in to hear: Was there anything that Doug and Heather learned about each other, in the process of writing their book, that surprised them? What are some common disagreements among couples that are ostensibly about money, but in actuality are about something much deeper? How do Heather and Doug suggest that people begin to examine their money stories to begin to understand their beliefs about m...

Tune in to hear: Why is spending our own money so psychologically difficult and have we as an industry scared people into thinking that they can’t spend their money and enjoy their lives? How can we, as advisors, help spending stop feeling like a loss for people in retirement? What are some practical tips for advisors and individuals to help them make the switch to spending thoughtfully in retirem...

Tune in to hear: After studying 300 years of history, what is Dr. Moore’s current view with respect to the American Dream? Is it maybe simultaneously true that it’s easier to get ahead than ever for the average American, but that there is also rampant corruption and nepotism at a high level? How does the current U.S. housing crisis compare in severity to those in our past? What are some common mis...

Tune in to hear: Where do people consistently misperceive their own behaviors and their own financial tendencies? Also, what are the forces that drive those blindspots? Why do so many financial planning tools optimize for all the wrong things and how can we make client services better center the client and their goals? What are Marla’s hopes for the world of tech when it comes to minimizing the “k...

Tune in to hear: What does Swiss-born British author Alain de Botton have to say about Macbeth’s cynical soliloquy on the brevity and meaningless of life? Why does he state that despair and hope are two sides of the same coin? How does storytelling make a truth durable in our minds by linking an idea to an ego? Why is our internal dialogue one of the most important stories that we tell? How can we...