Cliff Asness is one of the most influential quantitative investors of the last 30 years — and one of the most candid.
In this conversation, Cliff joins Infinite Loops to talk about why losses hurt more than wins, how bubbles form, why modern investing increasingly resembles gambling, and what the dot-com era can teach us about today’s markets.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
1:10 Losses Hurt More than the Wins
6:20 Dot-Com Bubble vs. the 2020 Tech Bubble
13:30 Meme Stocks, Robinhood, and Gamified Investing
21:40 Why Asness Doesn’t Know Which Stocks He Owns
29:10 Quant Discipline, Models, and Looking Stupid
38:30 Market Crises: GFC, Asian Debt Crisis, and Volatility
52:10 Human Nature as the Last Investing Edge
1:04:40 Machine Learning, AI, and “Surrendering to the Machines”
1:23:50 Bubbles, Forecasting, and Betting Against the U.S.
1:37:40 Private Equity, Volatility Laundering, and Risk Illusions
1:55:30 What Asness Would Change If He Ran the World
