The madness of markets: Why smart investors make crazy decisions– and how to exploit them

Wednesday 07 October 2026 | 18:00 - 20:30 | Evening Event

This event is in partnership with CISI

Even the smartest investors lose their minds – and their money.

Why do investors chase AI stocks that continue to rack up losses? Why do they overlook compelling opportunities hiding in plain sight? Why does the stock market fall after a football defeat, or rise on a sunny day?

In this talk, based on his brand-new book, Professor Alex Edmans reveals how mood, emotion and social contagion can lead even seasoned professionals to make irrational decisions.

But these mistakes can become your advantage. Edmans shows how to protect yourself from costly missteps and capitalise when others get it wrong. You’ll learn how to think more clearly, invest more effectively and recognise when the crowd has lost the plot.

Drawing on cutting-edge research and real-world examples, one of the world’s leading finance professors offers a compelling guide to navigating markets in a world that thinks fast, loud and often wrong.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand why markets behave the way they do
• How behavioural factors affect decision making
• How to identify distorted markets and what you can do with that information

This event is aimed at Portfolio Managers, Asset Owners, Wealth Managers, Research Analysts.

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Speaker:

Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance, London Business School

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given TED/TEDx talks with a combined 3 million views.

He serves as non-executive director of the Investor Forum, on Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing Advisory Board, and on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Academy of Social Sciences, and the CFA Society of the UK.

Alex is the author of Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It, and Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen). He has won 31 teaching awards and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021.