Andrew Lo

What makes this story so remarkable is that throughout my early childhood I had ongoing learning difficulties, particularly in mathematics. I struggled to learn the multiplication table, and no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't remember 6 times 7 or 7 times 8.

While neurological studies have tried to identify components responsible for fear and greed, the impact on finance is less clear.

If you rank the top 50 one-day moves in the S&P 500, a fair number of those happened within the last five or 10 years. That tells you that we're in a different, riskier market now.

More and more investors may be coming into markets everywhere but that doesn't mean that the markets are really getting more and more efficient, even in the United States. It does mean that there is more access for savvy investors who watch the money flows.

The United States has the most sophisticated financial markets in the world, which does not leave much room to maneuver. But it also offers investors the greatest access to information and the ability to execute trades quickly and efficiently. So it is a mixed bag of opportunity.

Maybe we should teach schoolchildren probability theory and investment risk management.

Great investors need to have the right combination of intuition, business sense and investment talent.

If we are able to allow people to earn a decent rate of return, with sufficient scale, we can all do well by doing good.

Many of us like to think of financial economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality.

Cancer is the great equalizer. Everyone is affected by it either themselves or through loved ones.

Ideas percolate. Through natural selection, the best ones survive.

During periods of extreme fear or greed, you don't have the proper balance between those two to generate market efficiency and you get extremes in behavior.