Gary Klein, Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin were interviewed in episode 109 of the Capital Allocator’s Podcast by Ted Seides. Click here to listen to the podcast or to download the transcript.  The conversation covers Gary’s background studying expertise with fighter pilots, tools to improve decision-making, including the Shadow Box technique, Cognitive After-Action Reviews, and Pre-Mortems.  Then the discussion turns to do a deep…

The premortem is an easy-to-use method for risk identification that has become increasingly popular within the investment community, as well as in other domains. The premortem often surfaces important, and sometimes path-critical, issues that go unnoticed. Also, the premortem increases candor and trust within teams putting it into practice. Two Economic Nobel prize winners (Kahneman and Thaler) have advocated for its use. However, too…

We have just posted the first working paper in our “Cognitive Finance Series”. Below is the abstract. To download the paper click this link. Abstract The holy grail of manager selection is to identify those individuals who will outperform the market over the long term. Formal academic inquiry in the past has focused on the study of correlational attributes such as social networks,specialization…

For some reason Amazon has lowered their price for our book to $25.26 which is actually less than our cost! You can see the price chart below. Give the gift of knowledge this holiday season. It’s not too late to order a copy of Pitch the Perfect Investment in time for Christmas. Click this link to order the book on Amazon or visit our website www.pitchtheperfectinvestment.com for more…

This blog post is the fourth in a series “Be skeptical of what you read in the paper – question everything” which profiles incredibly idiotic stories in the popular press.  While this doesn’t fit exactly into that category, I feel that the reporter missed an incredible opportunity to write a really provocative story by not looking at the “negative space”.  In this post, we will…

Leslie Norton of Barron’s recently interviewed Paul Sonkin in a story appropriately titled, How to Pitch a Stock. Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions, we can’t reproduce the story, but here is a snippet: Barron’s: How does your book differ from other investing books? Sonkin: Ours is a survival guide… …It gives you everything you need to know in any environment… …I was a portfolio manager…

Each year, the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School holds a stock pitch competition sponsored by Bill Ackman called the Pershing Square Challenge. It is open to first and second-year MBA students enrolled in the Center’s Applied Security Analysis class. This year there were a total of 40 teams competing and after several rounds of eliminations, five teams presented at the…

This is the second in a sporadic series called The Arbitrage Mindset. Our first post dealt primarily with an arbitrage in Dunkin Donuts gift cards.  As a refresher, the definition of “arbitrage” according to Merriam-Webster is: “The nearly simultaneous purchase and sale of securities or foreign exchange in different markets in order to profit from price discrepancies.” When you have the arbitrage mindset, your mind…

There was an interesting story in this morning’s Wall Street Journal I’d like to highlight.  Click on this link to find the article. I think the reporter is getting two very different stories mixed up.  The first concerns issues with the “star system” at Fidelity. The second is the issue of an alleged toxic corporate culture.  I don’t think the two are directly…

On the evening of February 2, 2018 the Columbia Student Investment Management Association hosted a stock pitch competition for 2nd year MBA students at the Penn Club in New York City. Paul Johnson was the MC for the event and I was one of the judges. Over time I have become much more sensitive to verbal and non-verbal cues when evaluating a stock pitch. One…