Spotting financial bubbles before they burst, with Vikram Mansharamani

My guest on the podcast today is author of a book based on the popular undergraduate course he taught at Yale University.

The course was called “Financial Booms & Busts” and it resulted in the book Boombustology, now in its second edition.

Since writing his book Vikram Mansharamani has gone on to show business leaders and investors how to look at the world differently in order to manage risk and navigate radical uncertainty.

His strategies help them peer into the future on crucial areas like China, food, the global economy, Africa, housing, investing, financial cycles, energy, and much more.

Vikram believes that the future doesn’t have to surprise us – and won’t – if we regularly step away from our expertise and look at the world through multiple lenses, something we talk a lot about in this episode. He calls this the generalist’s mindset.

When encountering information that seems irrelevant most people think, “So what?!” Generalists think instead, “Isn’t that interesting,” and look to connect disparate dots. When they do, the conclusions they draw and decisions they make may be very different from the more narrow-focused “experts.”

I got a great deal of value from this conversation, and loved Vikram's views on India and index tracker funds in particular.

Here's my conversation with Vikram Mansharamani, author of Boombustology, in episode 441 of Informed Choice Radio.