December 4, 2017· 28 min

An MIT Professor Explains His Original Theory For How Markets Really Work

Orality
Model
89%
Highly oral (epic poetry, sermons, hip-hop)

Speaker Breakdown

HostJoe Weisenthal(857 words)
M:29%
HostTracy Alloway(973 words)
M:29%
GuestAndrew Lo(2,752 words)
M:22%

Oral Indicators

Agonistic28%
completely, basically, very
Engagement61%
you, our, your
Memory Aids100%
listen, so, well
Repetition100%
market (45x), about (39x), what (36x)
Parallelism93%
And I'm Joe Weisenthal...., And I was thinking, you know, ..., But, yes, that sounds right....
Sound Patterns60%
30 question(s), alliteration: "markets move", alliteration: "barclays brief"
Formulaic Phrases8%
you know what, i mean

Literate Indicators

Hedging19%
could, maybe, probably
Passive Voice9%
was titled, is focused, are based
Abstract Nouns29%
investment, business, question
Subordination18%
because, therefore, while
Sentence Length50%
Avg: 17.6 words/sentence
Word Complexity52%
investment, analyze, anticipate
Academic Markers0%
Impersonal Style39%
304 personal pronouns found
Descriptive Style100%
apply, actually, genuinely

Description

There are two popular schools of thought with regards to how markets work. There's the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) which says that it's basically impossible to beat the market, because all information is completely priced in at all times (more or less). On the other side is an increasingly popular behavioral view which argues that various human emotions and biases are always creating situations that aren't justified by the data. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management about his own theory, which he calls Adaptive Markets. The theory attempts to bridge the behavioral approach with the efficient markets view. He argues that the proper way to view the market is through an ecological lens, examining the players as flora and fauna of a complicated system, to help determine who's thriving, who's dying, and where asset prices will go. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.