Benoit Mandelbrot’s Ideas about Investing and Markets

Benoit Mandelbrot was a Polish-born, French and American “mathematician with broad interests in the practical sciences.” I met him only once at a lecture at Microsoft Research before he passed away in 2010. Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson are the authors of the influential book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence. I suggest you…

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Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus

The ability to focus is an important driver of excellence. Focused techniques such as to-do lists, timetables, and calendar reminders all help people to stay on task. Few would argue with that, and even if they did, there is evidence to support the idea that resisting distraction and staying present have benefits: practicing mindfulness for 10 minutes a day, for example, can enhance leadership effectiveness by…

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WHEN WILL YOU PARTICIPATE IN AN ASSET PRICE BUBBLE?

Do investors holding an asset in the midst of a price bubble all come to share similar beliefs, even if they did not do so previously?  Asset price bubbles are unfailingly supported by a captivating narrative, which is ‘validated’ by price movements, draws in investors and allows for traditional valuation considerations to be discarded.  It…

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