Ep. 1355: Richard Thaler and Alex Imas with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio
Michael Covel's Trend Following
Michael Covel
4.6 • 732 Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guests today are Richard Thaler and Alex Imas.
Richard Thaler is a theorist in behavioral economics and a professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2017, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioral economics.
Alex Imas is a professor of Behavioral Science, Economics and Applied AI and a Vasilou Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He studies behavioral economics with a focus on cognition and mental representation in dynamic decision-making.
The topic is their book The Winner's Curse: Behavioral Economics Anomalies, Then and Now.
In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:
- Behavioral economics anomalies and their persistence
- Trend following, momentum, and mean reversion
- Nick Leeson and the Barings Bank collapse
- Development and evolution of their book
- Applications of behavioral economics in real-world decisions
Jump in!
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I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show.
To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/
You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/
Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast
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Instagram: @mikecovel
Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My guest today is Richard Thaler and Alex Imas. Their book, The Updated Edition, The Winners' Curse, Behavioral Economics, Anomalies, Then and Now. |
| 0:12.1 | This is an updated edition from Richard's original book in 1992. And for those of you who have been living under Iraq and don't recognize the name Richard Thaler, |
| 0:22.9 | he happens to have a Nobel Prize. He happens to be the ninth Nobel Prize winner to appear on my podcast. |
| 0:31.0 | And Richard is also the first star from the Big Short film to appear on my podcast. If you don't recall Richard and the Big Short, |
| 0:42.2 | go watch it again. It's a great film. Without any further delay from me, let's jump right |
| 0:47.1 | into my episode with Richard Thaler and Alex Imus. I hope you enjoy. |
| 1:05.6 | Music I'm S. I hope you enjoy. In advance of speaking with you guys, I wanted to go check my own podcast to see who I have talked to. |
| 1:11.5 | Not that I don't know all these names by memory, but some I forget. Some of you guys will |
| 1:15.8 | probably be very close personal friends with. Of course, I've had a chance to speak with |
| 1:20.3 | Danny Connman, one of the best stories ever relayed on this podcast, why he became a psychologist, |
| 1:25.4 | which I'm sure you guys know. It runs the gamut from Alison Gopnik to Vernon Smith, Angus Deaton, Robert Aumann, Stephen Pinker, Colin Kammer. |
| 1:35.6 | So, Richard, many of your peers, guys, you know well. |
| 1:38.4 | Cass Sunstein, a lot of interesting people. |
| 1:40.8 | So I appreciate you coming on. |
| 1:41.8 | I got to tell you, though, for me, the most fun thing, you're my first big short star to appear. |
| 1:48.1 | You haven't had Selena? |
| 1:50.2 | I don't know. And what about Margo? You know. |
| 1:54.4 | See, now I got you started there when I was talking about the beauty of Vietnam. Now we've gone |
| 1:58.3 | off in a direction. The record is not on yet, right? |
| 2:02.2 | It actually is. It absolutely is. We have not said anything untoward of being very respectful. |
| 2:08.8 | Yeah, no, that's true. If you get me started, I'll explain how Selena Gomez knew even less about |
| 2:16.0 | blackjack than she did about collateralized debt obligations. |
... |
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