Decision Nerds

EXPLORE

Society & Culture

Health & Fitness

© 2024 PodJoint

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/cd/b2/fd/cdb2fd57-3eb1-0829-4dab-8a32dd670e1e/mza_8739127222882068802.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

Decision Nerds

Paul Richards & Joe Wiggins

18 episodes

6 months ago

Send us a text 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 Marks. Founder and Co-Chairman of Oaktree he is, for our (and Warren Buffet’s) money, one of th...

Show more...

All content for Decision Nerds is the property of Paul Richards & Joe Wiggins and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Send us a text 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 Marks. Founder and Co-Chairman of Oaktree he is, for our (and Warren Buffet’s) money, one of th...

Show more...

Episodes (18/18)

Decision Nerds

Howard Marks: Navigating Crises - Creed, Preparation and Emotional Control

Send us a text 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 Marks. Founder and Co-Chairman of Oaktree he is, for our (and Warren Buffet’s) money, one of th...

6 months ago

44 minutes

Decision Nerds

Dealing with Trumpcertainty

Send us a text 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 refernced in the discussion.

7 months ago

17 minutes

Decision Nerds

Room 101: Project Coldplay

Send us a text 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 swords. He thinks from a behavioural perspective, now is one of the worst times ever to be an inves...

9 months ago

8 minutes

Decision Nerds

Room 101: Performance fees - heads I win...???

Send us a text 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 raises an interesting question - can they also be used to nudge investors away from unhelpful behaviour?

9 months ago

8 minutes

Decision Nerds

Room 101: Chartcrime?

Send us a text 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 Room 101 is the torture chamber in George Orwell’s classic book, 1984. For those who cross its th...

10 months ago

11 minutes

Decision Nerds

May Contain Lies...

Send us a text 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. Alex recently published a book, ‘May Contain Lies’, which discusses the methodological, psycholo...

1 year ago

48 minutes

Decision Nerds

Send us a text 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 highly experienced financial analysts. But what would happen if we all had access to AI-powered te...

1 year ago

40 minutes

Decision Nerds

Underperformance - everyone's got a plan until they're hit in the face

Send us a text 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 a huge amount of governance time, decide to sack the manager. 5. Rinse and repeat with poten...

1 year ago

38 minutes

Decision Nerds

The other F word

Send us a text 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 about errors around investment beliefs, processes and outcomes. - We then think about ...

1 year ago

36 minutes

Decision Nerds

Christmas behaviour

Send us a text 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 retailers use to get us to buy. 💵 Gift cards or cash as a present – to cons...

1 year ago

22 minutes

Decision Nerds

Principled? Does power corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely?

Send us a text 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 organisations and teams. Key takeaways: #𝟭 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 It’s t...

1 year ago

16 minutes

Decision Nerds

Seeing the future

Send us a text 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 found here.

2 years ago

49 minutes

Decision Nerds

Regrette, je regrette beaucoup de choses

Send us a text 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 regret can impact the best and bright of us – smarts and market knowledge are ...

2 years ago

22 minutes

Decision Nerds

Lessons from Glastonbury

Send us a text 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.

2 years ago

8 minutes

Decision Nerds

Getting culture right - the perils of PowerPoint

Send us a text 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 often end up with some version of the caricatures above not through bad intentions, but because buildi...

2 years ago

1 hour 2 minutes

Decision Nerds

Diversity and Decisions: Things you don’t usually hear from a D&I advocate…

Send us a text 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 it impacts decisions, there’s something here for you. In this episode, we discuss: ...

2 years ago

49 minutes

Decision Nerds

F&^% ups – how they happen, how they’re judged and how we can sort them

Send us a text 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 about how others judge us, it might not be in the way we want or expect. In this bite-size episo...

2 years ago

16 minutes

Decision Nerds

Lessons from the Fund Manager Whisperer - getting people to listen and change

Send us a text 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 key element of their work is getting investors to engage in a process that, by design, ...

2 years ago

53 minutes