Ep. 11 - Jim O'Shaughnessy, Founder of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management: Probabilities Over Possibilities

Jim O'Shaughnessy needs no introduction. Enjoy my conversation with the "Godfather of Quant Investing." Thank you so much for listening, we really appreciate you. If you have found this valuable, please consider leaving us a review as it will help more people find it! Thanks you're awesome! You can find more information and content by going to these places: Website: https://www.investingcity.org YouTube: Investing City Twitter: investing_city Instagram: investing_city Or feel free to email us at service@investingcity.org Again, we really appreciate that you would take the time to listen. Hope it was valuable. Let us know if you have any questions! Below you will find our entire conversation transcripted. Enjoy! Join our Dynasty Membership to see them all in one place. Ryan Reeves 0:13 Hello everyone and welcome to the investing city podcast where the goal is to get better at investing, business and life. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. It really means a lot. Without further ado, enjoy this episode, We talked to Jim O'Shaughnessy. If you have been involved in finance or you really enjoy finance, this name probably needs no introduction. Jim, aka the godfather of quantum investing, is very accomplished. He started his career when he was just 27. He opened a consulting firm to pension plans, and he's opened a few businesses since but now he is the chairman and co CIO of O'Shaughnessy asset management. He is very generous with his time, even though he is so accomplished as a best-selling author and all the other things that I mentioned earlier in this conversation we talked a lot about behavioral biases, why Jim thinks about probabilities more than possibilities, and a bunch of other things including a cool story at the end. So, stay tuned. I really enjoyed this one and it was an absolute privilege and pleasure to talk to Jim, so enjoy. Ryan Reeves 1:37 On today's episode of the investing city podcast we are just so overjoyed to have Jim O'Shaughnessy on the podcast that thanks so much for being here, Jim. Jim O'Shaughnessy 1:47 Well, thanks for having me, Ryan. Great. Ryan Reeves 1:49 So, I want to start it off on a little bit of a light-hearted note so Jim, can you just tell us what you think about gifs. And for those of our audience who don't know what a gif is can you explain it a little bit. Jim O'Shaughnessy 2:06 Sure. So, so those of us above a certain age, say 'GIF', and those of us below a certain age, say, 'JIF', and there's actually a marvelous GIF for that between Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. So, a GIF is, is a meme. That is almost always meant to be humorous not 100%, but meant to be humorous and, and a bit light hearted, and I enjoy them very much as anyone who follows me on Twitter would know. And it's very fun for me because all of my millennial children and many of my millennial friends insist that somebody who's 58 years old, simply cannot be this good at using gif. And, and I have many conspiracy theories that have, A), a whole room full of millennial interns who are finding every perfect gif, for every occasion, all the way to artificial intelligence that's one of my favorites. And it's, it's just something fun that, you know, what we do is so serious that, especially for people who follow financial Twitter. It's sometimes nice to be just light hearted about things but interestingly enough, even, even when you're being light hearted, you'll get people questioning things like that and so I had a question like that put to me not too long ago. And, and he seriously was wondering you know, don't you worry that people will think that you're not taking things seriously? And I kind of gave it as reason you know 999 why it's great to be a quant, and I went into the explanation that, you know,...