Coryanne Hicks of U.S. News & World Report highlights research by Prof. Andrew Lo and graduate student Pablo Azar in an article about using Twitter to spot financial trends. The study predicted market shifts based on the emotional context of tweets, finding that "when people start to get nervous, you can detect that very clearly," says Lo.
Camila Russo of Bloomberg reports on Gary Gensler’s comments at MIT Technology Review’s Business of Blockchain conference. Gensler, a visiting lecturer at Sloan and former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said many cryptocurrenciers “are operating outside of U.S. laws.”
Gary Gensler, a top financial regulator in both the public and private sector, spoke with Nathaniel Popper of The New York Times about virtual currencies and the need for regulation. This fall, Gensler will hold dual appointments at Sloan and the Media Lab, “where he will write and teach about the potential he sees for blockchains to change the financial world.”
Deepa Seetharaman of The Wall Street Journal speaks to Michael Casey, Senior Advisor for Blockchain Opportunities at the Digital Currency Initiative about new uses for blockchain and its potential to cut costs. “[B]ecause of all of this reconciliation, all of this multiple back-checking” Casey suggests that logistics and the financial sector are two areas that will benefit from blockchain technology.
Paul Solman of PBS Newshour speaks to Prof. Andrew Lo about getting investors to finance research into treatments for cancer and genetic diseases. “We now have the opportunity to treat disease in many, many different ways. We just don’t have enough money to explore all of the different pathways,” explains Prof. Lo.
Writing for Scientific American, Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland explains how new digital technologies are making it possible to build more efficient financial networks and decentralize the control of money. “That we can now create monetary systems that are truly understandable means we can potentially build the tools for minimizing risk, avoiding crashes, and maintaining individual freedom from intrusive governments and overly powerful corporations.”
In an article for the Financial Times about the best economics books of 2017, Martin Wolf highlights new works by Prof. Andrew Lo and Prof. Peter Temin. Wolf writes that in Temin’s “important and provocative book, [he] argues that the US is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with ever fewer households in the middle.”
Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Arianne Cohen spotlights Prof. Andrew Lo’s research examining adaptive markets. Cohen explains that, “Lo’s hypothesis says people act in their own self-interest but frequently make mistakes, figure out where they’ve erred, and change their behaviors. The broader system also adapts.”
Tom Buerkle of Reuters writes about “Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought,” a new book written by Prof. Andrew Lo, which argues that it is possible for investors to beat the market. Markets seem unpredictable because traders are human and “make decisions using short cuts” rather than weighing all options, explains Buerkle.
In an effort to make it easier for Americans, in particular Latinos, to save for retirement, MIT alumnus Carlos García launched Finhabits, a “bilingual digital platform that gives investment advice and teaches and encourages individuals how to invest and save for retirement,” writes Kristina Puga for CNBC.
MIT was named the top university in the world for the sixth consecutive year in the QS World University Rankings, reports Kyle Scott Clauss for Boston Magazine.
John Wasik of Forbes explains Prof. Robert Merton’s funded retirement ratio, which determines whether an investor will have enough retirement funds based on money saved, rate of return, and planned retirement. Checking this number allows time to improve it by “saving more, working later and adding more stocks to your portfolio,” explains Wasik.
A study by Prof. Tanveet Suri shows that a mobile-money service called M-Pesa had a long-term impact on poverty in Kenya, writes Tina Rosenberg for The New York Times. The researchers found that M-Pesa “helped women graduate from subsistence agriculture to small business, perhaps because having an M-Pesa account gives a woman her own money…and a greater sense of agency.”
In this MarketWatch video, Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, explains how investors can ensure they save enough for retirement. In addition to regularly putting aside money, Coughlin advises that millennials should also invest in core skills and professional development “so that they are able to stay in the workforce for as long as possible.”
Prof. Andrew Lo speaks with Barry Ritholtz of Bloomberg View about the field of economics. Lo explains that his new book chronicles his “intellectual journey from a diehard devotee of efficient markets and rational expectations into the realm of first psychology and behavioral finance, and then to neuroscience and how people really make decisions.”