Decision Nerds

Jan 22 2025 16 ep. 30 mins 18

Decision Nerds Podcast artwork

We talk about human behaviour and decision-making with an investment slant. And tell terrible jokes.

Join us as we dive into the trenches with industry innovators, academics and mavericks.

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Room 101: Project Coldplay

Jan 22 2025 8 mins

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.

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

Jan 14 2025 8 mins

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? P

Room 101: Chartcrime?

Jan 08 2025 11 mins

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

May Contain Lies...

Sep 11 2024 48 mins

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. Al

Pants on fire

Jun 18 2024 40 mins

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 – incl

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

Apr 23 2024 38 mins

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

The other F word

Feb 20 2024 36 mins

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 think

Christmas behaviour

Dec 12 2023 22 mins

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 tha

Principled? Does power corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely?

Nov 13 2023 16 mins

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 org

Seeing the future

Oct 09 2023 49 mins

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 her