Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby

Tune in to hear: - Dr. Portnoy says we’ve created a “Behavioral Finance entertainment complex that does very little to help real people make real decisions.” What does he mean by this? - Do you think we overlook the good behavioral finance has done because the good is subtle and simple? - What does he see as the good, the bad and the ugly of “nudging?” How can or can’t it be applied to the field o...

Tune in to hear: - Are various addictive behaviors (e.g. gambling, drug abuse) potentially symptoms of a larger societal issue? - What percentage of people in standard therapy might benefit from a finance-centric therapeutic approach? - What are some of the most common, or universal, expressions of financial dysfunction that Dr. Lutter sees in her work? - Are there some cases where having financia...

Tune in to hear: - How does non-compliance with advice, and the gap between knowing and doing, present on a macro level and impact our lives? - Is the financial services industry, as a whole, guilty of delivering advice without much regard for how it is retained and implemented? - How is the term non-compliance potentially problematic? - What are some individual characteristics of advice givers th...

Tune in to hear: - As a student of great advisory practices, what are some of the consistent themes that Jackie encounters across the board?  - Are there specific examples of advisors who have created a unique experiential piece for their clients. If so, what did these experiences look like? - Where do we get it wrong as an industry around some of the most discussed buzzwords? - What is a common m...

Tune in to hear: - Of the “36 questions that lead to love,” what are a few that Dr. Lurtz zeros in on and what makes these questions so powerful? Can these be applied in client-advisor relationships as well?  - What is the peak end rule and how can understanding it help us set better goals with our clients? - As practitioners, how can we drive home the salience of our future selves both for oursel...

Tune in to hear: - What are some different attitudes about aging and death held across the world? How particular is the western attitude about these things relative to the rest of the world? - How do these attitudinal perspectives shift the concrete outcomes (e.g. levels of happiness and fulfillment) for people who are themselves aging? - Where should one begin if they would like to start incorpor...

Tune in to hear: - Why is ESG such an important part of Rob’s financial practice? - How can we achieve financial wellness without merely paying lip service to things like environmentalism? - How can the average client strike an ideal balance of the three attributes of ESG?  - Rob grew up in Argentina during a time of extreme inflation. What did these formative years in this environment teach him a...

Tune in to hear: - Now that she has space from it, and also expertise in the field, what were some of the factors that drove her parents to such conspicuous consumption? - Where do our money scripts originate from? Are we shaped definitively by our environment & upbringing or can we forge a new path for ourselves? - How did Michelle come to a place where she was more comfortable reckoning with her...

Tune in to hear: - What in particular about the environment, including the pandemic and lockdown, contributed to the sort of fervor and madness we saw around meme stocks like Gamestop? - Risk, excitement and novelty were somewhat systematically stripped from our lives during the initial quarantine - what role, if any, did this play in the meme stock phenomenon? - How did the trading apps themselve...

Tune in to hear - Why did Emily feel the need to include elements of humor in her new book ‘Stacked: Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management?’ - What is “the one magical idea to rule them all” that Emily and Joe lay out in their book? - Do we ever need to do more digging to ensure that our financial goals are personal and authentic enough that they give us the fuel to take on the tough...

Tune in to hear: - Of all times to start a boutique fund, why would James start one in the current climate where the 3 largest asset managers control  more of the market share than ever before? - What edge does a small, boutique asset manager have in a world where there are such well-resourced competitors? - How are ESG like suggestions typically met by the companies that James invests in? - What’...

Tune in to hear: - Behavioral Coaching is one of the most important things a financial professional can do for their client, yet surveys show that clients don’t put a lot of value on it. How can we bridge this gap and help our clients see how much value we can deliver here? - Brendan claims that many advisors are creating “reverse rapport” in their first client meetings. What does he mean by this...

Tune in to hear: - What are some potential arguments against a traditional 60/40 portfolio and how do they hold up? - How would Phil define alternative investments? Also, is their bad reputation deserved for any reason and where did this reputation originate from? - What are 2-3 potential criteria to help discern the which alts can act as legitimate diversifiers in your portfolio vs. those that mi...

Tune in to hear: - What exactly is Neuromarketing and what makes it so powerful? - There are more brands and advertisements vying for our attention every year. How does Nueromarketing fit into this picture and help brands really stand out? - What are the six pillars of Neuromarketing that Kristin eventually settled on and where did she source these ideas from? - Why is making marketing highly pers...

Tune in to hear: - What are some unique financial considerations for those with high-level government security clearances? - What role does financial instability often play in cases of corporate and governmental espionage? - Financial instability is often at the root of why people participate in espionage. What implications does this tendency have for the broader population? - We often have very d...

Tune in to hear: - Robert says in marketing “you must get past the mental filter.” If we are going to get past the mental filter, how can we do it in a way that doesn’t land flat on its face or go too far? - How can one evoke an emotional response in a nuanced way without seeming corny or disingenuous? Are there certain business for whom this approach may not be effective? - How can a marketing ap...

Tune in to hear: - How did Brad originally get into the finance industry and how did he get into trading cards? - What are some of the draws, or compulsions, that get people into card collecting? - What time period was referred to as “the junk wax era” in Baseball Cards and why was this such a poor time to collect? - Are there any big takeaways that we can learn about broader capital markets from...

Tune in to hear: - Is the market always crazy or does it go through long periods of predictability in many peoples’ lifetimes? Is uncertainty implicit in capital markets? - There’s always going to be a reason to fear, there’s always going to be a reason not to invest. What pragmatic steps can we take to invest thoughtfully in the face of this? - Why might concentrated, active portfolios make more...

Tune in to hear: - What might the lay person, who is enthusiastic about behavioral economics, not know about its historical origins? - What was the larger zeitgeist that gave rise to an envy of physics, and hard science, within economics? - Are there commonly used methods in the world of financial planning that may be rooted in some unexamined assumptions? - When consulting clients, how do we stri...

Tune in to hear: - The old American adage of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” seems to be an enduring sentiment across many other cultures. Why is it such a tricky thing to sustain wealth across multiple generations and what can be done to remedy this? - Why is pointing the finger at the third generation an overly reductive approach? What could the first generation do differentl...

- As someone who works in practice management and as a trainer, how does Penny get advisors to embrace the power of practice management when there are plenty of advisors who are financially successful who are violating all the best practices? - If Penny created her own top 25 advisor list, what criteria would she choose to decide who belongs on that list? - What are some practical means of gaining...

Tune in to hear: - Morningstar recently conducted an in-depth study on the financial biases that people bring to the table. What are the real world, fiscal impacts of these biases? - In the study, were they able to quantify a percentage or a dollar amount difference between biased and unbiased folks? - 2% of people in their study showed no evidence of bias - are their really people out there that...

Tune in to hear: - Ric Edelman started off as a reporter - does Ric think that an advisor could start “Edelman 2.0", so to speak, using the same formula with education at the forefront? - Why might it be wise to “narrowcast” rather than broadcast? - What are two or three actionable steps that American investors can take now? - Why does Ric think that Blockchain technology is one of the top four in...

Tune in to hear: - Many are very focused on the behavioral coaching elements of behavioral finance, but overlook the upside of integrating the findings of behavioral finance into actual asset management. How can we be better about balancing the two? - Toews’ portfolios attempt to anticipate declines. How specifically does he go about that and what specific signals is he looking for? - How can we t...

Tune in to hear: - What event prompted Dr. Howard to move from using a  market efficiency / rational markets framework to a framework of behavioral finance? - How can we discover market inefficiencies that are exploitable if the price is almost always wrong and not reflecting true value? - If the behavioral dislocations of market prices are so vast, and the price is always wrong, why is the indust...