Speeches

 

Please note: This is a selected archive of speeches I gave before I joined The Wall Street Journal.  Since 2008, under the Journal’s rules, I have turned down approximately 99% of all requests to make speeches.  I will probably be unable to accept your invitation, too, and I apologize for that.  If you would nevertheless like to me to consider an invitation to speak before your group, you may email me at info[at]jason.zweig.com. 

 

3-Dec-03:
PowerPointBen Is Back: Lessons and Ideas from Benjamin Graham
This presentation summarizes the life and living legacy of Benjamin Graham, author of “The Intelligent Investor.” What can we still learn today from the greatest investment thinker who ever lived? Jason Zweig outlines some of the enduring lessons any investor can learn from Graham. A webcast is available at: http://www.aimrdirect.org/cpe/what.cfm?test_id=376
(Note: AIMR charges a $25 to $35 fee for access to this webcast).

18-Mar-03: Hoover Institution
PowerPointIs Your Brain Wired to Make You Rich?
This speech, which Jason presented at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 2003, is a shorter and simpler version of the talk Jason gave to the AIMR in 2002. It is a good visual overview of how the human brain goes about making financial decisions – complete with dazzling graphics of neurons firing away.

25-Oct-99: Harvard University
PowerPointBehavioral Finance: What Good Is It, Anyway?
Behavioral finance – the study of investing psychology – is getting tons of attention. The trendiest money managers all say they use behavioral finance to exploit the mistakes of irrational investors. In this speech to a conference at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Jason argues that behavioral finance is not a window onto the behavior of other people, but a mirror that shows our own shortcomings; we should use it not to take advantage of other stupid investors, but rather to make ourselves smarter investors.

14-May-02:
PowerPointMoney and the Mind: How Neuroscientists Are Cracking the Code of Investment Behavior
Jason explains the exciting new insights into financial decision-making that are coming from groundbreaking research in neuroscience. This presentation, to the annual meeting of the Association for Investment Management & Research, outlines the roles that different parts of the human brain play in estimating probabilities, assessing risk and reward, and integrating emotion with reason. [See also October, 2002, and March 18, 2003]

27-Jun-01:
Fat Tails, Thin IceFat Tails, Thin Ice
In this speech, the keynote address to the 2001 Morningstar Investment Conference, Jason talks about how financial planners misunderstand and misuse the lessons of history: They cite academic studies “proving” investment theories without ever reading them; they extrapolate past data without questioning the quality and durability of the numbers; and they fail to communicate investment risk in terms clients can understand. Jason offers suggestions on how to do better.

27-Jun-01:
Fat Tails, Thin IceFat Tails, Thin Ice
In this speech, the keynote address to the 2001 Morningstar Investment Conference, Jason talks about how financial planners misunderstand and misuse the lessons of history: They cite academic studies “proving” investment theories without ever reading them; they extrapolate past data without questioning the quality and durability of the numbers; and they fail to communicate investment risk in terms clients can understand. Jason offers suggestions on how to do better.

7-Dec-00:
docIf Your Clients Know as Much as You Do, How Can You Keep Them?
In this speech, Jason warned that money managers needed to build an emotional bond with their investors before it was too late. All too many fund companies rely on hot performance and marketing gimmicks, instead of building trust by managing risk and investing for the long term. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems a shame that more people in the fund industry didn’t take this speech (to the Association for Investment Management & Research) more seriously.

7-Dec-00:
PPTIf Your Clients Know as Much as You Do, How Can You Keep Them?
In this speech, Jason warned that money managers needed to build an emotional bond with their investors before it was too late. All too many fund companies rely on hot performance and marketing gimmicks, instead of building trust by managing risk and investing for the long term. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems a shame that more people in the fund industry didn’t take this speech (to the Association for Investment Management & Research) more seriously.

14-Oct-99:
doc1974 and 1999: History Turned Upside-Down
In this speech to the Foundation Financial Officers Group (a club for major institutional investors), Jason looked back exactly 25 years to late 1974 — when the outlook for investing was the polar opposite of late 1999. With internet mania at its most euphoric, Jason warned that investors always get carried away at market extremes. This speech combines a historical viewpoint with insights from behavioral finance to create a perspective that may be useful even today.

1-May-97:
docPutting Investors First
What should matter more to mutual funds: investment results or marketing success? In this speech — to a group of fund executives at a dinner held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Investment Company Institute – Jason warned that the fund industry was heading for disaster by trying to serve both masters. The speech infuriated the audience; several attendees stood up at the end and yelled that Jason had insulted their integrity. The trading scandal exposed in 2003 suggests that Jason’s doubts about their integrity were valid.

1-Jun-95: Morningstar Investment Conference
docWhy Do Mutual Funds Cost So Much?
In this speech, Jason told the history of rising expenses over the years and reviewed – then dismantled – the fund industry’s justifications for the ever-higher flood of costs. If you want to learn more about how high fund expenses are, how they got there, and what to do about them, you may find that this speech (given while Jason was the mutual funds editor at Forbes) remains a useful resource.