Brian Portnoy Brian is currently the Director of Investment Education at $100B investment solutions provider Virtus Investment Partners, where he strives to simplify the complex world of money in an effort to help investors make better decisions and lead a joyful life. For the past two decades, he has held senior investment, research, and strategy roles in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries at Chicago Equity Partners, Mesirow Financial, and Morningstar.  Brian is the author of “The Investor’s Paradox,” a book about manager selection rooted in choice theory.  His second book, “The Geometry of Wealth” hits electronic and physical bookstores this week. Our conversation covers Brian’s experience in manager research and lessons learned, choice theory and managing expectations, differences between institutional investment and private wealth management, distinction between seeking wealth and trying to get rich, his terrific new book, and why volatility is risk. Brian’s insightful take on investing and his journey from the complex to the simple is full of investment nuggets of gold.   Learn More Discuss the show and Read the transcript Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast   Show Notes 2:24 – Brian’s start in the business 5:18 – The useful skills he developed during his tenure at Morningstar 6:37 – The hard questions he would ask 7:15 – Why he left Morningstar 8:53 – What he learned at Mesirow that made him so detail oriented 10:57 – Leaving Mesirow 12:08 – What led Brian to writing The Investor's Paradox: The Power of Simplicity in a World of Overwhelming Choice             14:51 – The Art of Choosing 16:58 – What is the investors paradox             17:04 – The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less 19:29 – Reaction to the book 24:10 – Difference between his views on the asset management side vs the wealth management side 27:11 – The concept behind The Geometry of Wealth: How To Shape A Life Of Money And Meaning 30:58 – The shapes used to take people from confusion to comfort with money and investments, starting with the circle 36:00 – Moving on to the triangle in this formula 41:03 – The second triangle, focused on behavior 43:36 – The big blue square 49:29 – Hopes for the book 52:46 – Closing questions

Tali Sharot is a leading expert on human decision-making, optimism and emotion. A neuroscientist by trade, Tali combines research in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience to reveal the forces that shape our decisions, beliefs and inaccurate expectations of the future. She is currently a visiting professor at MIT, and is also an associate professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where she directs the Affective Brain Lab. Tali is the author of The Influential Mind, The Science of Optimism, and The Optimism Bias.  Our conversation tackles many of the issues Tali has studied in her career, including the optimism bias, sense of control, confirmation bias, behavioral change, and overconfidence.  We then touch on some of the applications of her work to investing, including the home country bias, making non-economic financial decisions, active management, emotion-driven decisions, team-based decisions, and research heuristics.  Lastly, we learn a few parenting tricks from the Influential Mind. This conversation took place behind closed doors at the Context Leadership Summit in Las Vegas.  Learn More Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast   Show Notes 3:18  – Tali’s educational path to becoming a cognitive neuroscientist 4:58 – Why people make mistakes, optimism bias 7:24 – Does optimism bias impact our view of others as strongly as ourselves 9:12 – What should we do about our optimism bias 12:37 – How does controlling your environment impact how your brain works 14:47 – How do we work around our problems in decision making? 17:40 – How do you get more people to conform to things that are beneficial 21:11 – The impact of different personality types on these tactics 22:05 – How do we use this information to impact financial decisions 23:53 -  Home country bias among investors 25:00 – Is home country familiarity a bad thing? 27:12 – Impact of well-being on investment decisions 28:20 – Picking stocks because of the illusion of control 29:52 – The role of emotion in driving our decisions 32:39 – How do you use this information to help individuals or teams make better decisions 36:23 – New research 40:41 – Raising kids 42:29 – Closing questions