Daniel Kahneman on better decision-making

NOBEL laureate Daniel Kahneman, who died in March at the age of 90, transformed the fields of economics and investing. At their most basic, his revelations demonstrate that human beings and the decisions they make are much more complicated – and much more fascinating – than previously thought.

He delivered a captivating mini seminar on some of the key ideas that have driven his scholarship, exploring intuition, expertise, bias, noise, how optimism and overconfidence influence the capitalist system, and how we can improve our decision making, at the 71st CFA Institute annual conference in Hong Kong in 2018.

“Optimism is the engine of capitalism,” Kahneman said. “Overconfidence is a curse. It’s a curse and a blessing. The people who make great things, if you look back, they were overconfident and optimistic – overconfident optimists. They take big risks because they underestimate how big the risks are.”