The Outthinking Investor

With a standard deck of cards, there are around 2.5 million potential hands at the start of each game of poker. The key to success is in the decision process—determining how to play a hand, and how much to bet, despite not knowing which cards are in another player’s hand. Like in poker, every investment decision includes at least some degree of uncertainty. What lessons can poker teach investors about sizing their bets, managing risk, and making better decisions for their portfolio? This episode is not intended to promote gambling or equate investing to gambling.

This episode of The Outthinking Investor delivers insights on the benefits of probabilistic thinking, the best methods for analyzing portfolio decisions, and how investors could develop a sound decision-making process for targeting returns - even when facing uncertainty and market volatility.

Our guests are Annie Duke, a decision scientist, former world-class professional poker player, and the author of books including “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit”; Tina Lindstrom, Head of Oil Derivatives Trading for North America at Marex; and Adam Papallo, Head of Implementation Research at PGIM Quantitative Solutions.

Do you have any comments, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover? Email us at [email protected], or fill out our survey at PGIM.com/podcast/outthinking-investor.

The Hotel Lafayette in downtown Buffalo, New York, was the site of the first-ever meeting of the Optimist Club, which gathered during a tumultuous period for financial markets following the panic of 1910. Research has shown that optimism provides a sense of control. As uncertainty hovers over markets today, investors might seek to harness the power of optimism to overcome financial stress and make better decisions for their portfolios. Can investors remain optimistic while also surveilling markets for downside risks?

Economist Brad DeLong, author of Slouching Towards Utopia, and the CFA Institute Research Foundation’s Laurence Siegel, author of Fewer, Richer, Greener, join PGIM Fixed Income’s Robert Tipp, Chief Investment Strategist and Head of Global Bonds, to discuss reasons for investors to be optimistic about the future, particularly as opportunities emerge in the bond market.

Labor markets around the world tightened during the pandemic, contributing to a rapid rise in inflation. Demographic changes could make tight labor markets a lasting characteristic of the global economy. Most of the world’s biggest economies are home to an aging citizenry, while their populations are growing at a slower rate overall. These trends have the potential to alter market dynamics in the decades to come.

Katharine Neiss, PGIM Fixed Income’s Chief European Economist, and Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics and author of The Great Demographic Reversal, join us as we explore the inflationary effects of demographic changes, the implications for monetary and fiscal policy, and how aging populations could reshape the economy and the global investment landscape.

When the future becomes increasingly uncertain, investors need to cut through the noise and think beyond the obvious answers.

In season three of The OUTThinking Investor, an award-winning podcast from PGIM, global thought leaders and PGIM experts will bring their unique perspectives for the year ahead and beyond. Is inflation finally on the retreat? Can labor markets withstand an economic slowdown and demographic headwinds? Will the tense geopolitical climate ease or escalate? What is the outlook for interest rates after the rapid hikes of 2022? Join us as we reexamine the past, present-day opportunities, and future possibilities in global capital markets — to help you spot opportunities when markets are stressed and uncover risks when markets are rising.

Investors are challenged to mitigate the impact of a variety of risks, from rising inflation to a global economic downturn. What about the risks that are harder to imagine? Recent events such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have altered the investment outlook in significant ways, turning a spotlight on the potential for new tail risks that may be on the horizon.

In this episode, author and UC Berkeley lecturer Kevin Coldiron and Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp discuss recent liquidity crises, portfolio strategies for managing tail risks, and why tighter monetary policies could expose cracks in the financial system.

For more on this topic, PGIM’s 2022 Global Risk Report analyzes the results of our tail-risk survey, which canvassed 400 senior decision-makers whose firms have a combined AUM of more than $12 trillion.