The Psychology of Market Champions: Inside the Minds of Point 72 & Citadel Portfolio Managers | Dr. Gio Valiante

Today's episode is brought to you by Peak Day Asset Management and their AI enhanced ETF range, tickers PQNT and PQUS. You'll hear more about how they're using AI to enhance equity exposure later in the show. For now, let's get into it. Welcome to other people's money. I am joined today by doctor Giovallianti. Doctor Gio, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me, Max. I'm excited to spend time with you today.

Yeah. Well, it's gonna be a lot of fun. It's a crazy time in markets. Your busy season, some might say. You've been a performance coach for top hedge funds like Point seventy two, PGA Tour golfers like Justin Rose and Jordan Spieth, the Bills, the Gators, and and other athletes and executives. You still work with hedge fund managers and athletes to this day. I'm sure your client base is diversified across the different types of hedge fund managers that are out there. And there's been a lot of talk about the growth of the pods and the the pod shop environment, how they differ from place to plac

Oh, you know, a 100%. There's there's a saying, I think I think the book was atomic habits, and the author said that we don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. I want you to really think about that. Like, every individual has goals that he or she want to achieve. But think about it that if you're in an environment or an organization or a team where your goals are not consistent with the system, its values, its norms, its culture, its incentives, then you're only gonna you're gonna fall to the level of that system. You know, we saw that this year in the NFL. I

You've talked a lot about fear. And from the outside, you hear about the short leash at a lot of these places. And I'm interested, do you see fear more from people who are in these bigger institutionalized shops? And is there something about the people who thrive in that environment that they are those fearless individuals?

No. That's that's that's a really great question. So the thing about fear, let's talk about fear categorically, is it's one of those things we call the universality of the human condition. It's one of those things that everybody experiences. Right? Unless you have some brain damage. And by and large, everyone's brain is wired for fear. And and the thing about fear is it's a very old emotion, and it's a survival mechanism. So essentially designed to keep us alive. So if you think of, like, you know, about about three hundred thousand years that modern humans have evolved into what we are, but y

How aware of this conflict are these large platforms in in the ways that that their PMs are are perhaps incentivized? And then how do you juxtapose that with you might think that a a single manager, knowing the failure rate, right, of single manager hedge funds would naturally be fearless, but that public failure is so much more acute for them given the name is usually on the door. Right? It's entirely their baby. Look. If you you have a bad year at at the pawnshop and you have to, you know, pick up and and go somewhere else, certainly, your your friends in the industry are gonna know. But it'

You know, it's interesting because it really is a case by case basis. It really boils down to the individual and sort of the dynamic of the individual with the environment. So think of it, for example, at the level of management right above the portfolio manager or the analyst, If every time if you hear from your manager but you only hear from him or her after a losing trade or in a drawdown, right? So they're not celebrating your success