Tobias Moskowitz

  • Dean Takahashi Professor of Finance, Yale University School of Management
  • Principal, AQR Capital, LLC.
  • Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research

Tobias "Toby" Moskowitz is the Dean Takahashi ’80 B.A., ’83 M.P.P.M. Chaired Professor in Finance at the Yale School of Management, and a principal at AQR Capital Management, LLC.  He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  He previously held the inaugural Fama Family Chaired Professorship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from 2009 to 2016.

Professor Moskowitz was recognized by the American Finance Association with its 2007 Fischer Black Prize, which is awarded biennially to the top finance scholar in the world under the age of 40 in years when one is deemed deserving. Moskowitz also won the Ewing Marion Kauffman Medal in 2012 for the top research in entrepreneurship under 40.

He has received numerous awards, including the Smith-Breeden, Brattle, Fama-DFA, Michael Brennan, Bernstein-Fabozzi and Jacobs-Levy, Harry Markowitz, and Q-Group paper awards.

In collaboration with David F. Swensen, the former CIO of the Yale Investments Office, Professor Moskowitz founded the Yale School of Management’s Master’s program in Asset Management in 2021, for which he serves as the Academic Director. 

In 2011, he wrote the New York Times bestseller Scorecasting:  The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won, (Crown Archetype, Random House) co-authored with L. Jon Wertheim.

 

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Past Hosts Include:
  • Merrill Lynch
  • JP Morgan
  • Citadel
  • AQR Capital
  • American Finance Association
  • SALT Conference
  • Huron Capital Partners, LLC
  • MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
  • Stockholm School of Economics
  • Copenhagen Business School
Rave Reviews About Tobias Moskowitz
Toby entertained our audience of CEOs and other executives with an interactive presentation that related sports statistics to metric-driven business decisions we face daily. He has a gift for conveying complex data in an easy-to-follow, conceptual format that challenges conventional wisdom while offering intriguing insight into human behavior and motivations. Highly recommend!

Tobias Moskowitz: AI and the Future of Finance | The American Finance Association - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Tobias Moskowitz
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AI and Big Data

AI and Big Data Big data explosion – describe all of the new data and the massive amount of it that has been created in the last several years More data created in the last two years than the entire history of humankind Most of that data is “unstructured” and requires new techniques and method ...

  1. AI and Big Data
    • Big data explosion – describe all of the new data and the massive amount of it that has been created in the last several years
      • More data created in the last two years than the entire history of humankind
      • Most of that data is “unstructured” and requires new techniques and methods, such as Machine Learning and AI
    • Machine learning and AI
      • What is it?
      • How does it work?
    • Where is it useful?
    • Where is it not so useful?
    • Some sports examples
    • Some other examples
    • The challenges and successes of applying this everywhere

  1. How Does ChatGPT (Large Language Models) Work?
    • An explanation through examples of how LLMs like ChatGPT work
    • Simple and intuitive
    • Why it looks like you can “interact” with it and how it mimics human behavior
    • What it is and can be used for
    • Where it struggles

  1. How will AI Impact Our Jobs?
    • A brief history of technology and human labor
      • Plato and the written word
      • Guttenberg press
      • Motor vehicles
      • Computers
    • Cite academic work on the subject
    • Substitute or complement to humans?
      • Depends on the industry, job, and most importantly occupation/task
      • Evidence from academic studies on its effects
      • Projection of what these effects might be/look like in the future

Decision Making and Behavioral Biases

What Counts? “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” – attributed to Albert Einstein Funny anecdotes about measurement and where it goes/has gone wrong Rewards to embracing the “hard to measure” Why measure? What’s the goal? Tim Duncan and the ...

  1. What Counts?
    • “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” – attributed to Albert Einstein
    • Funny anecdotes about measurement and where it goes/has gone wrong
    • Rewards to embracing the “hard to measure”
    • Why measure? What’s the goal?
    • Tim Duncan and the value of a blocked shot
    • Covid testing vs. sewage sampling
    • Adding complexity, removing complexity, and measuring the impossible

  1. What’s Luck Got To Do With It?
    • How the role of luck impacts life in potentially big ways
    • How luck helped the 1990 Chicago Bulls create a dynasty
    • The luckiest athlete ever – Steve Bradbury
    • Attempting to control luck – the plight of Turk Wendell and why baseball players are the most superstitious
    • How luck helped create the tech giants of today
    • Why we don’t want to base decisions based on luck
      • Luck can’t be controlled or predicted
      • What’s the #1 reason coaches are fired? Answer: bad luck! 
      • Same with money managers.
      • Same with many other decisions.
    • So, how do we avoid these cognitive traps? How do we correctly appreciate the role of luck and make better decisions?
    • A blueprint for making better decisions.

  1. More Than a Gambler’s Fallacy
    • Fooled by randomness
    • Finding patterns where there are none
    • Hot hand fallacy
      • Gilovich, Valone, Tversky study about basketball shooting
      • Steph Curry
      • Making bad decisions – chasing fund (short-term) performance
      • Exploiting behavioral biases – trend following
    • The Gambler’s fallacy – trying to be random/unbiased
      • Making bad decisions
      • Judges, loan officers, and baseball umpires
      • Tinder and dating
    • How these biases might affect markets and how to make better decisions once aware.

  1. Behavioral Science (and Markets)
    • Contrast rational vs. behavioral view of finance
    • Three main behavioral biases related to investing:
      • Anchoring and loss aversion
      • Overconfidence
      • Fooled by randomness
    • Illustrate with sports analogies
      • Golf (putting for par or birdie), Hockey (pulling the goalie), Football (going for it on 4th down)
      • NFL draft, driving, teaching
      • Hot hand and gambler’s fallacy
    • Illustrate with life analogies
      • Apple shuffle feature
      • Casinos
      • Federal judges
      • Dating
    • Applied to investing and markets

  1. Omission Bias and the Power of Doing Nothing
    • Acts of commission are deemed more harmful than acts of omission
      • Examples in medicine, law, business
      • Sports – referees
    • How this can lead to bad decision making
    • How to combat it
    • How technology can help and hurt

  1. Home Field Advantage and the Power of Identification
    • Explore the idea of home field advantage
    • How present and persistent is it?
    • What drives it and explains it?
    • How to identify its causes and consequences
      • Lessons for business and life
      • Lessons for measurement and decision making
    • What can we learn from it?

Strategy

Unconventional Success vs. Conventional Failure The rewards and risks to unconventional thinking Sports Cautionary tale: Paul Westhead, Tony Larussa Success: Fosbury flop, West Coast offense, Moneyball Business Cautionary tale: Delorean, Beta max Success: Amazon, Tesla, disrupters Inves ...

  1. Unconventional Success vs. Conventional Failure
    • The rewards and risks to unconventional thinking
      • Sports
        • Cautionary tale: Paul Westhead, Tony Larussa
        • Success: Fosbury flop, West Coast offense, Moneyball
      • Business
        • Cautionary tale: Delorean, Beta max
        • Success: Amazon, Tesla, disrupters
      • Investing
        • Hedge funds
        • Private equity
        • Long-short, market neutral strategies
        • Liquid alternatives
        • Diversification

  1. Evaluating (and Acquiring) Talent
    • Sports
      • Draft
      • Free agency
    • Business
    • Best practices
    • Team concept

  1. Using Sports to Explain How Best to Invest
    • The NFL draft – a story of diversification
    • Unconventional and alternative thinking – the NBA draft
    • Combining diversification with alternative thinking – penalty kicks in soccer
    • Applied to investing

  1. Sports Gambling, and What it Can Teach Us About Financial Markets
    • Response to news
    • Under- and over-reaction
    • Lottery effects
    • Relation to financial markets
    • Fantasy sports

  1. Best Processes
    • Convey good research process through sports and other examples. 
    • Process = theory --> model --> data --> new model . . . repeat
    • Careful measurement
    • Robustness
    • Rigorous statistics
    • Evolution of methods, data and how to innovate

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Biography

Tobias "Toby" Moskowitz currently holds the Dean Takahashi ’80 B.A., ’83 M.P.P.M. Chaired Professorship in Finance at Yale University at the Yale School of Management, for which he is the inaugural chair holder (in 2016).

He was previously the Fama Family Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he taught from 1998 to 2016. 

Professor Moskowitz was recognized by the American Finance Association with its 2007 Fischer Black Prize, which is awarded biennially to the top finance scholar in the world under the age of 40 in years when one is deemed deserving. The award cited his "ingenious and careful use of newly available data to address fundamental questions in finance." Moskowitz also won the Ewing Marion Kauffman Medal in 2012 for the top research in entrepreneurship for scholars under the age of 40.

His research papers have received numerous awards, including the Smith-Breeden Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Finance, the Brattle Prize for the best non-asset pricing paper published in the Journal of Finance, two Fama-DFA Prizes for the best paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics, two Michael Brennan Awards for the best paper published in the Review of Financial Studies, the Swiss Finance Institute Outstanding Paper Award, and the Bernstein-Fabozzi and Jacobs-Levy Award for the best paper in the Journal of Portfolio Management, two Harry Markowitz prizes for the best paper published in the Journal of Investment Management, the Whitebox Prize for best financial research, and multiple Q-Group Best Paper Awards.

His work has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Financial Times, US News and World Report, Money magazine, and a 2005 speech by then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.  He has also appeared on CNBC's Closing Bell and Squawk Box, CNN, FOX, Bloomberg, as well as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel

Professor Moskowitz serves as a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research and is a former editor of the Review of Financial Studies, an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, and an associate editor at the Journal of Financial Economics.

His research studies financial markets and investments, including the behavior of prices and investors. He has explored topics as diverse as momentum in stock returns, biases in investment portfolios, the return to private business ownership, financial contracting in commercial real estate, mutual and hedge fund performance, the political economy of financial regulation, and the economics of sports.  He has presented his research at many academic, corporate, and government institutions worldwide. 

Professor Moskowitz spent the 2007-2008 and 2014-2015 academic years on leave at AQR Capital Management, LLC a hedge fund in Greenwich, CT, with which he has an ongoing consulting relationship. He was made a principal at the firm in 2015, where he contributes to research on asset pricing and investments for AQR’s domestic and international investment strategies.

In collaboration with David F. Swensen, the CIO of the Yale Investments Office, Professor Moskowitz founded the Yale School of Management’s Master’s program in Asset Management, for which he serves as the Academic Director and whose inaugural class will graduate in 2022.  The one-year program seeks to train Master’s students in the theory and practice of asset management, with a curriculum that is tailored for that aim.

In 2011, he wrote the New York Times bestseller Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won, (Crown Archetype, Random House) co-authored with L. Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated, that uses economic principles to explain the hidden side of sports.  He and Wertheim are also authors of the children’s book The Rookie Bookie in the Fall of 2015 (Little Brown).

Born in West Lafayette, IN, Moskowitz earned a bachelor's degree in industrial management and industrial engineering (with distinction) in 1993 from Purdue University, a master's degree in management from Purdue in 1994, and a Ph.D. in finance from UCLA in 1998.


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