Masters of Finance: Interviews with Some of the Greatest Minds in Investing and Economics

For more than a decade, the editorial board of the Investments & Wealth Institute (formerly IMCA) Journal of Investment Consulting has been conducting interviews with individuals we consider to be Masters in the areas of finance and economics. Our Masters so far have included seven Nobel laureates (Fama, Kahneman, Markowitz, Merton, Scholes, Sharpe, and Shiller) and eight other extraordinary investment visionaries (Bernstein, Bogle, LeBaron, Leibowitz, Litterman, Malkiel, Thaler, and Thorp).

Our method was straightforward. We began each interview by asking an open-ended, scene-setting question such as, "Would you tell us what you consider your greatest accomplishment as well as your greatest disappointment?" Then we opened up the interview to questions from committee members, allowing the conversation to go where it may.

We initially thought these interviews would appeal to investment professionals who were interested in learning about the underpinnings of modern finance and economics, so we published the Masters interviews in the Journal of Investment Consulting, starting in 2004. As the project continued, however, we were surprised and delighted to find that our conversations with the Masters also provided insight to the human side of the world of investments. In their own words we heard many Masters describe how they survived failure and went on to groundbreaking discoveries and other accomplishments. We learned, among other things, that someday behavioral finance may not exist because all of finance will be behavioral.

This book is a decade-long collaboration of individuals who put time and effort into a project that started with one simple interview, then grew into a whole that really is greater than the sum of its parts.