Behavioral Finance Seminar Launch

On May 26, the Walker School of Business and Technology launched its new seminar for financial professionals on “Behavioral Finance - Understanding Human Behavior to Improve Investment Skills”.

Prof. Dominique Jolly, Chair of the WSBT, opened the event and welcomed the audience. Dr. Michal Paserman, finance research faculty introduced the participants to the newly emerging field of Behavioral Finance. She demonstrated the way common emotions, psychological biases and mental shortcuts intervene in investment decision-making, causing practitioners depart from standards of accuracy and rationality. Participants gained insights from neuroscience and evolutionary biology with implications for investment decision-making and saw how emotions cloud rational reasoning during financial crises.

The presentation was followed by a networking session, where the participants, bankers and professionals from other financial institutions, had the opportunity to meet with Ms. Clare Flynn Levy, founder and CEO of Essentia Analytics. Clare explained and demonstrated a Decision Support Software for Fund Managers, based on behavioral finance.

Originally scheduled on June 18, the Behavioural Finance Seminar is postponed until a later date.