How AI, Avatars and Voice Cloning Can Be Used to Improve Finance Education with Geoff Robinson

Welcome to the Future Finance show where we talk about the top 10 reasons we hate paper ledgers.

My philosophy is you kind of need to try and keep as close to the frontier as possible of where this technology is going. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna beat people maybe by getting it wrong seven or eight times before they even started considering doing something.

We're gonna go for it.

Jeff Robinson, a tech innovator, former UBS managing director. With a passion for AI finance and cutting edge technology, Jeff has been the.

Forefront of digital transformation.

Today he's here to break down the future of AI automation and what it means for finance professionals.

You know, the introduction of artificial intelligence AI agents into the mainstream part of the bank just goes to show you that big banks can do this.

I understand as finance people we are risk averse, but if we're burying our heads in the sand right now and pretending that AI is just a fad.

I don't think finance is doing that.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice before starting this journey, what would it be?

Just back yourself. There's always people.

Future Finance is brought to you by qflow AI, the strategic finance platform. Solving the toughest part of Planning and analysis. B2B revenue align cells. Marketing and finance seamlessly speed up decision making and lock in accountability with hueflow AI. We're here today with Jeff Robinson on another episode of Future Finance. Jeff, we're really excited to have you with us today. So thanks for joining Glenn and I.

It'S a delight to be here. Thank you for inviting me, you know, always a pleasure.

So you know Glenn, I've had Jeff on before in Financial Modelers Corner. He's quite the modeler, we had some great conversations around that. But he's also a tech geek so we figure we'd bring him on our show, Future Finance.

I was going to say this sounds like a match made in heaven.

Honestly. You can't see the rest of this room. There is just bits of tech hanging out everywhere. There's a VR headset over here, there's audio kit, there's three screens. There's an AR set of spectacles over here that came directly from China yesterday, which were amazing. But I think I've been like this since I was about 17 of just buying things that just accumulate, eventually accumulate dust in my house and, and cause irritation to the people around me. But it's, it's fun going through this stuff.

So the spectacles that came from China, are they just straight recording everything you see and sending it direct to the ccp. Is that what's called?

No, no, these, these unfortunately are oklies. I just saw them on the CES conference YouTube review. And you know, that technology and where it's progressing, you know, I kind of buy into the idea and you know, I've played with this tech when it was like Microsoft Hololens four years ago that were four grand a piece and it was okay, but now it's coming down to 400 bucks. It's a, it's, it's getting increasingly more accessible and, you know, we'll talk about this, we go through the podcast. But my philosophy is you kind of need to try and keep as close to the frontier as possible of where this technology is going so you can be the first to experiment, react, make mistakes, be agile and learn. And I'm not going to beat people by being smarter than. I'm pretty sure I'm going to beat people maybe by, by getting it wrong seven or eight times before they even started considering doing something, you know, so that's kind of, you know, where I kind of come from.

Yeah, I tried those, the meta Ray Bans the other day for the first time. They were pretty interesting. I mean, it's. You, you know, they've got the camera sitting know, right on the edge of the lens and you, I mean, I, I couldn't figure out a use, a really practical use case. So I was just. Friend of mine had them and I put them on in a restaurant and I would look and say, you know, describe what I'm looking at. And there was a, a big aquarium and I had it tell me what kind of fish were in there. And I had it describe my food and, and, and give me a recipe and tell me how I can make it at home and stuff. So that it's pretty neat. And I can see that being integrated just in the future, just in every pair of glasses you buy are just going to.

I kind of feel that, you know, these things may replace smartphones and you wear a pair of glasses and it's all there. I think we're, we're a long way away from that. But a long way away is not necessarily a long period of time. It's just a lot of technical technological evolution to get to that point. But, you know, I'm always surprised by how, how quickly Moore's Law just extrapolates itself. And I just want to be as close to it as possible. And it's amazing how, you know, I'm no, by no means am I a, an AI expert or Anything I, I just love this stuff. But when you speak to people is I joined them in 2015, really because I needed something to do. I've been sold. They were seven, eight years older than me, so kids through school, all that kind of stuff. And most of them went off to play golf and. Or oddly actually one of them to run triathlons, which literally is the last thing I would ever do if I was seeking some sort of peacetime retirement plan. And I was just a bit younger. So UBS offered me a job to.

Be a research analyst, which I hadn't done before.

And I thought I could do it. So I had a crack at doing that. Did that for 10 years. I was an MD there.

That was great fun.

Loved it. But it's very different to running your own shop and running your own business. And not a huge amount of agility, but we managed to achieve some really cool stuff. But I kind of hit 50 and I just had this idea that I, I just felt there's one more kind of gain kind of left in me and if I didn't go and do it, you know, there'd always be that sense of regret. So there wasn't an active decision to leave. But just subconsciously I just got myself into that position. And it takes a time, it takes a bit of time to get out of a bank. You can't just say, listen, I'm done, guys, I'm off. Because that costs you a lot of money. So you have to kind of make, you have to have these, I'm not very good at it, subtle conversations to try and get out. And I just wanted to go back to training, which is where I started as a much younger guy. But training back in the 90s and the noughties was very much in person and not scalable. And you could only build a business up to a certain level and there aren't that many A, good instructors out there, and B, you can't scale them. C, it's traditionally very expensive to produce training material. And what ends up happening is a company will produce training material and they'll basically just sweat it for 10 years. And so it's good for a year, then it gradually kind of decays over time. But what's happened since the noughties is obviously technology's gone nuts. And what I thought is I would like to do some in person training because it's fun, but it's completely unscalable and I don't want to be schlepping across the planet kind of delivering myself to Various people, how can I scale me? Well, I could build a digital platform. I see competition, I've done this and I just don't think it's that good in terms of production quality, engagement quality. Now I don't think I've got the perfect answer. I'm always working to try and make this stuff better. And also most of the people doing the training haven't really worked at particularly high levels within the markets. So they're quite often quite junior guys and girls three or four years in end up doing the training.

And I just thought, you know what?

I've been imagined directing an investment bank. I've been a number one ranked analyst. I would love to go and tell people what I know rather than sort of, not to be morbid, die with this knowledge. And I want to try and create something where I can bring some scale to the creation of that content. And there were a couple of things I did at UBS where I thought, I thought I could use some of this technology. And there's a company that I think a lot of people are aware of, Synthesia, they've just done, you know, a series, I don't know if it's C or D around that values the company at about $2 billion. They were set up in 2017 or 18. I first met the chaps that kind of were running that business then back in 2019 as we went into Covid and they just had this digital avatar technology and it fascinated me in terms of, I think fascinated and scared me, but more fascinated, if I'm honest, where you could go with that. And in 2019 the technology wasn't good enough. But what you're seeing coming out at the moment is quite incredible. And what's going to be coming out later this year is off the charts. Good. Where you cannot, I don't think you can tell the difference between the digital avatar and the real person, which gives rise to all sorts of issues in terms of how you manage that type of risk. But let's say, you know, you know, this is just me doing my stuff here, so I'm in control of what's going on. So I can, I feel I can manage that risk relatively well. But in bigger organizations that's, that's certainly an issue, but it just gives you such huge scope to be able to produce high quality content quickly. You know, I, I produced a video a couple days ago on Deep, Deep Seek, you know, where I was analyzing why did the US stock market react so aggressively to Deep Seek rather than just doing the headline Deep Seek did this, and the trillion dollars got knocked off the s and P500. That's a great headline, but you kind of really need to understand why. And the ramifications are so huge. And I produced that content in about an hour, and it was on the platform. I'm not in the studio. The editing is very easy. And it's a clone of me. So it's a clone of my. My physical nature as well as my. As my voice. And, you know, I think the clone that I'm using at the moment is kind of like an 8 out of 10. I think it'll be a 10 out of 10 within about three or four months. In about a week, it'll be about 9 out of 10. Because I'm getting an upgrade to some of the work that we're. We're working on. But that is incredible.

I was joking that I thought maybe you're getting a haircut or something so your avatar.

Don't get. Don't get.

I went.

I went for a haircut just before because you. When you produce, you know, there's various different ways to produce avatars and the expensive ways to go into a studio. And so that's what I did last week is I'm in a film studio in London and I went for a haircut the day before. So it was. It was my best haircut that was immortalized in an avatar because I made the mistake before where not necessarily having bad hair, but just having lunch and then building an avatar and having a little bit of my lunch still on my lip. And then that was immortalized in the avatar. And luckily that's quite a quick avatar to redo. But you just think, oh, my goodness, that's a terrible mistake I've just made there. Literally. I think that was, you know, I can see corned beef. That's not a good look. You know, you've kind of immortalized yourself.

In that respect with, you know, thinking about your. Your site being the investment analyst. I. I know, being a training site, but I'm also thinking of the timing of this and how you are really leading edge with what you're doing right now. Which, to your point, it's not that hard. I mean, it. So many people could be doing this right now, and the technology is moving so fast. So right now you have an avatar that mimics your. Your physical appearance and your. In your voice and is. You give it the script and that is reproducible, and you could. Much quicker than you could produce videos. You just write these scripts and you could, you could crank out a lot.

Of content, but we managed to achieve some really cool stuff. But I kind of hit 50 and I just had this idea that I, I just felt there's one more kind of game kind of left in me and if I didn't go and do it, you know, there'd always be that sense of regret. So there wasn't an active decision to leave. But just subconsciously I just got myself into that position. And it takes a time, it takes a bit of time to get out of a bank. You can't just say, listen, I'm done guys, I'm off. Because that costs you a lot of money. So you have to kind of make, you have to have these. I'm not very good at it. Subtle, subtle conversations to try and get out. And I just wanted to go back to training, which is where I started as a much younger guy. But training back in the 90s and the noughties was very much in person and not scalable. And you could only build a business up to a certain level and there aren't that many A good instructors out there and B, you can't scale them. C, it's traditionally very expensive to produce training material. And what ends up happening is a company will produce training material and they'll basically just sweat it for 10 years and so it's good for a year, then it gradually kind of decays over time. But what's happened since the noughties is obviously technology's gone nuts. And what I thought is I would like to do some in person training because it's fun but it's completely unscalable and I don't want to be schlepping across the planet kind of delivering myself to various people. How can I scale me? Well, I could build a digital platform. I see competition, I've done this and I just don't think it's that good in terms of production quality, engagement quality. Now I don't think I've got the perfect answer. I'm always working to try and make this stuff better. And also most of the people doing the training haven't really worked at particularly high levels within the markets. So they're quite often quite junior guys and girls three or four years in end up doing the training.

And I just thought, you know what?

I've been imagined direct in an investment bank. I've been a number one ranked analyst. I would love to go and tell people what I know rather than sort of not to be morbid, die with this knowledge. And I want to Try and create something where I can bring some scale to the creation of that content. And there were a couple of things I did at UBS where I thought, I thought I could use some of this technology. And there's a company that I think a lot of people are aware of, Synthesia. They've just done, you know, a series, I don't know if it's C or D around that values the company at about $2 billion. They were set up in 2017 or 18. I first met the chaps that kind of were running that business then back in 2019 as we went into Covid and they just had this digital avatar technology. And it fascinated me in terms of, I think fascinated and scared me, but more fascinated, if I'm honest, where you could go with that. And in 2019, the technology wasn't good enough. But what you're seeing coming out at the moment is quite incredible. And what's going to be coming out later this year is off the charts. Good. Where you cannot, I don't think you can tell the difference between the digital avatar and the real person, which gives rise to all sorts of issues in terms of how you manage that type of risk. But let's say, you know, you know, this is just me doing my stuff here, so I'm in control of what's going on. So I can, I feel I can manage that risk relatively well, but in bigger organizations that's, that's certainly an issue, but it just gives you such huge scope to be able to produce high quality content quickly. You know, I, I produced a video a couple days ago on Deep Deep Seek, you know, where I was analyzing why did the US Stock markets react so aggressively to Deep Seek rather than just doing the headline. Deep Seek did this and a trillion dollars got knocked off the S&P 500. That's a great headline, but you kind of really need to understand why. And the ramifications are so huge. And I produced that content in about an hour and it was on the platform. I'm not in the studio. The editing is very easy and it's a clone of me. So it's a clone of my, my physical nature as well as my, as my voice. And you know, I think the clone that I'm using at the moment is kind of like an 8 out of 10. I think it'll be a 10 out of 10 within about three or four months. In about a week, it'll be about 9 out of 10. Because I'm getting an upgrade to some of the work that we're we're working on. But that is incredible.

I was joking. I said I thought maybe you're getting a haircut or something so your avatar.

Don't kid, don't get. I went, I went for a haircut just before because you, when you produce, I mean there's various different ways to produce avatars and the expensive ways to go into a studio. And so that's what I did last week is I'm in a film studio in London and I went for a haircut the day before. So it was, it was my best haircut that was immortalized in an avatar because I've made the mistake before where not necessarily having bad hair but just having lunch and then building an avatar and having a little bit of my lunch still on my lip. And then that was immortalized in the avatar and luckily that's quite a quick avatar to redo. But you just think oh my goodness, that's a terrible mistake I've just made there. I've literally, I think that was, you know, I can see corned beef. That's not a good look, you know and you've kind of immortalized yourself in that respect. God.

With you know thinking about your, your site being the investment analyst. I, I know being a training site but I'm also thinking of the timing of this and how you are really leading edge with what you're doing right now. Which to your point it's not that hard. I mean it other so many people could be doing this right now and the technology is moving so fast. So right now you have an avatar that mimics your, your physical appearance in your, in your voice and is. You give it the script and that is reproducible and you could much quicker than you could produce videos you just write these scripts and you could, you could crank out a lot of content that way. But it's one way content. What I'm picturing, you know the sort of the wealth front or the robo advisor. You could be if you got like a two way. Yeah, you could be the next Andy Ratch. Right? You could be.

Yeah. I can't go into too but I've had that conversation with one of the big banks in Europe this in the last week or so. That's a project I'm going to be working on which is this kind of robo advising. Where does we think about how the natural evolution of this stuff goes is that you hook an AI agent into a digital avatar that's capable of generating content live effectively. So you ask a question and then the Avatar is coming back with an answer. And that avatar is drawing from an underlying knowledge base which could be pretty, pretty broad. And it talks to you. So, you know, again, I'm looking at the code I've got here in front of me. I was doing this today, not with the, the digital avatar, but, you know, we're building AI agents here for fun at the moment where we're just trying to get them to work and it's not super hard to build these things and, but, you know, I've got a support agent on the platform that you can just ask questions like, you know, how do I, you know, how do I set up a subscription? Well, you go off and do this. How do I cancel one? You go off and do this. That's relatively easy stuff. But you link that into digital avatar technology, which I know is possible. It's just the latency is the issue as that gets kind of squeezed down, which it will. I think you've got something that again, is incredibly exciting. Dangerous.

Yeah. And I, I'm picturing like, you know, so you could have your investment thesis and idea, you know, and sort of risk thing, but you could have, for each client, they could, and this could be just handled in the, you have the background on the client. You know, okay, this person is 55 years old. They like impact investing. They like these sectors. They don't want these sectors. They all. And then it's in the prop. So you could, I mean, it's a, it's amazing where this is going.

And I, I, I, I got back this morning, actually, I got an email. And it's only at the end of the email I just thought, oh, this is AI. And the email, clearly the agent's gone onto my website, scraped me off that website, put together a really great little pitch about, oh, I've noticed you're doing this, and you've set this up now you finished at ubs, blah, blah. And I'm reading this thinking, this is weird. And then it's just at the end I think, okay, this is AI. I see what's happened here. I know who the company is now. I know what they do. That all makes sense. And again, you know, that scale that you can build is, it's just so incredible. I mean, I struggle to sleep at night some nights. I mean, if I go to bed and, you know, I'm a sucker for a bit of TikTok before bed just because my TikTok is a pretty boring thing because it's just all AI, it's AI agents, all this kind of stuff. And that's a really great way not to sleep because you look at this stuff, your brain goes off in 20 directions and it's kind of. Yeah, I mean, I can't even put my finger on where the true direction is for me, I think in terms of my business, it's that ability to have a live digital avatar that's linked into my underlying knowledge base. I don't want it linked into Claude because whilst Claude or Gemini or whatever is very good, my competitive USP is my analytical brain and track record over 20 years of things that I've come up with which you don't see getting pulled out by an lmm, you know, so what I want to have is kind of almost, you know, it's, it's not quite uploading my consciousness, but maybe uploading my technical knowledge that has been written down at some stage.

The. Jeff, Jeff.

Yeah, yeah. May not be that popular.

No, I, thanks for sharing that. I appreciate all that. You know, I, I, I love talking to you just because I know the passion you have for technology and AI and I know Glenn shares a similar. I have a feeling I could step out and come back an hour later, you two would just still be going, no problem. Fortunately, I get to be here too. But one thing we want to ask you about I think is fun is I know you've done the avatar, you've done a lot of work. You have a podcast you're doing right now that's full AI generated.

Talk about it is. Well, again, I'm very conscious that the content has to come from me. So what I'm not doing is. So what I tend to do, my typing is pretty rubbish. I open up a Word document, I stick the dictation on and I just rabble and then that gets my consciousness out.

And then that's what Glenn and I do when we stick Mike in front of us.

I think it's a brilliant way to do it. I mean, I did this at UBS when I was writing research is I was using the dictation technology. I think I was the only person on the platform who did it, but I'm knocking out 4,000 words a day, you know, and it takes a bit of time to get to that point of being able to speak in an eloquent way where it's structured and it makes a certain amount of sense. But yeah, so I generate that and then I drop it into some software that creates a bilateral podcast. So it's my voice and it's another clone and what the other Clone does is essentially they're kind of the question person. So they're asking me questions, and then my clone answers those questions based on my underlying script. And, you know, I did that. You know, the purists out there be saying that's a terrible idea because it should be very human. And I think, yeah, you're probably right. But I sort of don't care because I want to play with the technology and see what the technology can do. And so when the next evolution comes, I'm as close to that as possible, you know. And, you know, this technology came out, I think, let's say midday. We probably produced our first podcast at 3:00pm you know, because I was just on it and close to it, and I try and get as close to these companies as possible. So I tend to have a situation where I've got an idea what the roadmap is. So I'm not getting hugely surprised and I'm kind of on it, you know, I mean, you know, it served me well at you, but I like talking to people. You know, they may not all the time like talking to me, but, you know, the nice thing about talking to people and offering bits of feedback and ideas is that it kind of brings you closer together. And I do that with. We probably partner with 10 or 12 tech firms and probably six or seven of them. I'm. I'm pretty close to. I'll jump on, you know, the. The geeky kind of webinars where it's Q and A and I desperately try not to dominate them too much, but I tend to. And having done this for a long time, and I guess I've got that weird mix of, you know, there's a million financial modelers that are better than me, but, you know, my financial model is pretty good. You know, I'm an investment analyst. I like the tech. I built these systems from the back end and I speak to investors. That is that mixture of that portfolio skills. I think that gives me the. Gives me an edge in the stuff that I'm trying to do.

Ever feel like your go to market teams and finance speak different languages? This misalignment is a breeding ground for failure, impairing the predictive power of forecasts and delaying decisions that drive efficient growth. It's not for lack of trying. But getting all the data in one place doesn't mean you've gotten everyone on the same page. Meet qflow AI, the strategic finance platform. Purpose built to solve the toughest part of Planning and Analysis, B2B Revenue. QFlow quickly integrates key data from your go to market stack and accounting platform, then handles all the data prep and normalization under the hood. It automatically assembles your go to market stats, makes segmented scenario planning a breeze and closes the planning loop. Create airtight alignment, improve decision latency and ensure accountability across the team.

And do you see the. Your digital avatar. So you've got all this knowledge that you've acquired over a lifetime and there is, there is value in that. Your, your digital. Not, not like you said, not your consciousness but your at least your learnings or as much of them as you've been able to, to write down. When, when you are interacting with your own avatar and seeing what it, what it creates and comes up with, do you feel like it's capturing that or sometimes does it freak you out? And are you worried about reputational risk of digital? You saying something that no, I wouldn't say that or no that's not accurate or it's.

I watch everything.

I've got a very. Yeah, I watch everything. And at this level, you know, the scale that, I mean, I guess at this stage of my career I'm not, I'm doing this because it's a passion project, you know, and it's a passion project that's profitable, which is great and it generates a decent amount of money. It's not making me a billionaire or anything like that. But I do this because it's fun and I want to experiment, but I also want the quality to be very good. I value my reputation very closely. So I watch stuff and I go through everything before it actually gets posted on there. And it's an evolution. I mean if you go back to some of the videos we did a year ago, they kind of don't look that great compared to what you see today. And a year ago they look great. You know, and then six months something happens and then three months ago something happens and next week something will happen and then in three months time or four months time, I'm not sure what the timeline is. Something amazing is going to happen and it'll just be an evolution. And you know, what I'll do is, you know, I think content platforms, the different thing with a content platform is.

It needs to be as complete as possible.

But then that creates a real issue with your UX in terms of trying to find content. And so, you know, your UX needs to be very good, your search needs to be elastic, but you're always balancing that more content versus I can't find your content or literally I feel totally overwhelmed and I don't know what to do on your platform, but I think this evolution of technology just allows you to go and revisit things. And I don't know about you, I'm sure you guys are the same as. Every time I do something, as soon as I finish, I just think, oh, I could have done that better. And so it just gives me an opportunity to kind of go back and think, all right, I'll do that. I mean, I've, you know, I just. I don't know if I told you, Paul, you might have seen, but I wrote a modeling book.

Yes.

In a bar in Doha. So I'm in Doha for three weeks doing some work out there, and it's great work, but it finishes at 4:30. So I'm literally from 5 o' clock thinking, what am I gonna do? And the bar's brilliant. There's loads of sports there. You watch football, cricket, this and the other. And I sat there for three weeks.

And I wrote a modeling book.

And I've done seven or eight books over the years, a lot of them into, like, individual banks and things. And every time I finish these books, it's always like, oh, I could have done that better. Next time I'll do this. So, you know, that was. But again, that's another great example of fairly simple technology. I wrote the book in Canva, and Canva is basically like a little marketing tool. But I did all the typesetting in there. It was so easy. The quality of the digital imagery is incredible. And, you know, I built this and wrote this in a bar. You know, I mean, that's not how you're supposed to do it, really. It should at least be a Starbucks.

Come on. Isn't that how you did yours, Glenn? You wrote your books in a bar.

So what is it?

No, you.

You write drunk and edit sober, right? That's kind of the way. Yeah. That's what Hemingway said, I think. Was it?

I think that's a great quote. That's the great quote. I'm a bit of a lightweight, though, so I'm not sure the quality of my work would be like, But.

Oh, that's funny. So I'm curious, what has you most excited right now as far as technology? Is there. I mean, obviously AI, but is there particular company software, something out there that you're just like, I can't wait for this? Or this has me really excited.

Oh, I think there's two companies that keep me very excited. One is eleven Labs, which is probably the preeminent voice cloning technology that's out there. I think they do some incredible stuff. And Synthesia, the digital avatar platform, but combining those two together, where you get this really high resolution voice clone together with a digital avatar, you put those two together, which I didn't realize you could do until recently because, you know, Synthesia kind of produce a, a decent voice clone, but not the voice clone you can get from 11 labs and then you can port the 11 labs one into instant thesis. So that interaction is, I think, quite incredible. And having an idea of what the roadmap is the next 12 months, just seeing how this technology develops, I also am very interested to see where AI agents can go in terms of developing really granular recommendation engines rather than what you tend to see on people's. I mean, obviously Amazon do amazing recommendations, but for, you know, if you're not a $3 trillion company, it's a little harder. But you know, recommendations are a simple concept in the sense of. It's that kind of cross correlation between the metadata of your assets and then the, the metadata, the profile of the user and then just looking for intersections. And that's quite mechanical in terms of the recommendations. I'm simplifying, I'm simplifying it hugely.

But if you can just talk to.

Your platform and say to your platform, I'd like to know a little bit more about how, I don't know, SaaS software, revenue recognition, it's a very boring example, works and it comes back and says, oh, you should go and watch this, these sets of assets here. And all you've got to do is click on it and you're gone. I think that's going to be amazing. I mean, my mind, I can't get my head around where it's going to go, you know, literally every night, I'm not kidding, I'm not sleeping very well. You know, I'm getting about four or five hours sleep because my brain is just firing off things. And the problem is with this, you dream about this stuff, you get some brilliant ideas halfway through your sleep and the next morning you can't remember damn thing, you know, so it's, it's that.

Kind of, that kind of energy that's just age, Jeff. They're not.

That's age. I still think I'm 23.

You know, we're, we're all, you know, on the other, other side of 45 here. So, yeah, we're getting there.

Two thirds of us are on the other side of 50. So Paul's the young man in the room, I guess.

Right? There. Yeah, I'm close, but I got a year. All right, so we have this fun section we do toward the end of our podcast. It's always fun. Glenn and I take different approaches here, and I'm gonna go with my normal approach this time. Glenn, I'm not going to mix it up on you. So I've come up with some random questions using Chat GPT and some questions with you, your website, some other things like fed it the information and it came up with 25. It goes fun and unique questions that I could ask to get, to help our audience get to know you. And so you have two. I can use the number generator to randomly pick a number between 1 and 25, or you can pick the number and then I'll read that.

Go random, go generator.

All right, here we go. Let's see what we get. 20. What is question 20? I don't even think I've read that one. All right, this is a good one. So what's a book, podcast or documentary that's completely changed your perspective on business or investing?

Oh, God. Which one do you pick? Podcast, I would say. I really love the acquired podcast.

You know, they're a financial modeler's corner.

Yeah, well, obviously financial model is corner, but the acquired one makes me think out of my, my normal kind of modeling kind of sphere. So Acquired is pretty good book, actually. I think some, I mean, it's, it's a pretty popular one. Is Daniel Kahneman thinking fast and slow?

Yeah, I've got that one right back here.

Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's over there. Yeah, I, I, and I've read that again and again and again documentary and I quite enjoyed the Oasis one that they published in the UK recently. I mean, that's, that's always pretty entertaining, you know. So, yeah, Oasis, Dan La Kahneman and acquired and financial model supporter.

Good mix. All right, Glenn, your turn.

Yeah. So I'll tell you, Jeff, we interestingly, so this used to be, we used to go and we would try, we would pit, you know, llama against chat, GPT against Gemini and have it just create questions. But we've figured out we actually. And Paul, I'm not sure if you did it for these, but we started personalizing these questions by we'll take your LinkedIn profile and then stuff from your website and everything and put them in. So these are supposed, they're at least influenced by your. Who you are in the world. And so Paul always does the, the random number thing and I always just dump them in and I Just tell Chat GPT to pick one for me. I don't even, I don't even go out of the system and have one. So that's. We've got. Some of these are kind of generic. That's okay though. I don't know.

We'll go.

Yeah, we'll go with this. What? Chat GPT is recommended. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice before starting this journey, what would it be Now? I don't know what they, what chatgpt means by this journey. Is it your current journey, your career? I don't know. I think it's a, it's answerer's pick. You can, whatever the journey is, I.

Think, I think you can. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a mixed race kid who was brought up in the north of England in the 1970s, which is a pretty tough place to grow up at times. Also the north versus I live in the south of England now and the north. And the south is very different. You know, it's quite, you know, if you think kind of industrial golf and you think kind of financial south. And for me, that bred quite a lot of insecurity in my ability of just thinking, not good enough. A lot of people telling me I'm not good enough. So school kind of saying not university material, no messaging there. That was kind of positive. And you believe what people say to you at that age. And you know, my parents are hugely supportive, but they're not university educated. I was first generation university stuff. And, and at each stage I always felt, when I got to university, I felt I didn't belong. And when I got into a professional job, I felt I didn't belong. And that obviously affects your decision making in all sorts of different ways. And the advice to my younger self would be just back yourself, you know, you are good enough.

Well said, well said. That's great.

Yeah.

There's so much to be said of just being able to believe in yourself.

Yeah. And it's hard when, it's really hard when you're young and you look at everybody around you and how good people are and there's, there's always people that are better. I think the revelation for me, and I think I've said already on the podcast, is, and it's almost like a philosophy is, I know I'm not going to outsmart many people, but there are different ways to win, you know, and I work in an industry where there's lots of smart people. So if you're trying to compete in that red Ocean, you're just going to get beaten up. So you've got to create this kind of. Another good book is Blue Ocean. Strategy is creating that uncontested market where you can succeed with the skills that you're good at. And you know, they can, you know, ideally they're skills that are different to other people and that's how you win. Yeah, Very good question.

I, I love it. I think it's a great place to end there. I love the idea. Just kind of back yourself, believe in yourself. Because it's hard. It can be really tough. And as you get older, you start to realize more and more of the value in it. So I, I appreciate that it turns.

Out, well, I'm awesome. So, you know, well, I would expect.

As much at your age.

Yeah, there's nobody else in this house that believes that, by the way. So, you know, my wife's probably listening next door thinking, oh, God knows.

Well, at least we had fun with it. What we'll do at the end of this, after we finish it, we'll upload one of your episodes so people can listen to that and see what it's like. But thanks for carving out some time.

First, Jeff, always, always a pleasure. Paul and Glenn, lovely to meet you. That was really fun. I really enjoyed that.

Likewise, sir.

Thanks for joining us for that episode with Jeff Robinson. It was fascinating to learn about how he's using AI to create an avatar and to clone his voice. Next, you'll get to hear a brief clip from Unlocking the upside from the InvestmentAnalyst.com podcast. It'll be about seven, eight minutes long. It's 100% AI generated. We hope you enjoy this short clip and all that Jeff shared with us is he was a fascinating guest on the cutting edge of AI.

Welcome to Unlocking the Upside, where we turn Wall Street's complexity into crystal clear investment wisdom. I'm Geoff Robinson and after spending 25 years in the trenches, from leading a number one ranked research team on Wall street to building and selling companies, I'm here to share the insights that can only come from being in the room where it Happens. I founded TheInvestmentAnalyst.com to bring institutional level analysis to everyday investors. And now I'm taking it one step further with this PO podcast. And I'm not alone on this journey. Meet my co host, Hope Stott.

Thanks, Jeff. And yes, I'll be the one making sure we break down these Wall street concepts into real world applications that our listeners can actually use. Someone's gotta keep this Wall street veteran, grounded. We're here to challenge what you think you know about investing and show you angles that most people never consider. Each week, we'll peel back the layers of the market, revealing opportunities hiding in plain sight. We're not just giving you fish. We're teaching you how to spot the best fishing spots that others walk right past.

Whether you're managing a multimillion dollar portfolio or just dipping your toes into the market, we're committed to expanding your investment toolkit with practical strategies and real world examples. No jargon, no gatekeeping. Just straight talk about what works and what doesn't. Get ready to see the market through a new lens. This is unlocking the upside. Let's dive in. Imagine a world where Wall street traders take cues from flocks of birds. Well, that's exactly what we're diving into today, as we explore how the mesmerizing aerial ballet of starlings is revolutionizing our understanding of financial markets.

Hold on. Are we really talking about birds and stocks in the same breath? This sounds like a stretch.

I know it sounds wild.

But bear with me.

We're about to unpack some groundbreaking research that's challenging everything we thought we knew about market behavior. It all starts with the work of Giorgio Parisi and his fascination with starling murmurations.

Murmurations? You've lost me already. What exactly are those?

Ah, sorry, let me back. Murmurations are those incredible aerial displays where thousands of starlings move in perfect synchronization. You've probably seen videos of them online. What's fascinating is that these complex patterns and emerge from just three simple rules each bird follows.

Okay, I think I've seen those, but I'm still not seeing the connection to finance.

Well, that's where it gets interesting. Paris realized that financial markets behave in surprisingly similar ways to these bird flocks. Both are examples of complex systems where simple individual behaviors lead to unpredictable group outcomes.

Hmm.

I can see how markets might be complex, but are you saying they're as unpredictable as a flock of birds?

In many ways, yes. And that's why traditional financial models often fall short. They assume markets behave rationally and predictably. But reality is much messier. And Paris identified five key principles that connect starling flocks to market behavior.

Five principles? That sounds like a lot to unpack. Can we take them one by one?

Absolutely. Let's start with the first principle. Local information and global patterns. In starling flocks, each bird only pays attention to its seven nearest neighbors. They don't need to know what the entire flock is doing to create those amazing Patterns we see.

And how does this apply to financial markets?

Think about how information flows in the financial world. Analysts follow their sector peers, traders watch their regular counterparties and and investors track similar strategies. Just like Starling's, market participants primarily respond to their immediate information environment.

So you're saying we don't need to understand everything happening in the market to make good decisions?

Exactly. Parisi uses a 2008 financial crisis as an example. The crisis started with specific mortgage backed securities and then cascaded through the system. Much like how a predator's appearance causes a wave of movement through a starling flock.

That's a analogy. What's the second principle?

The second principle is phase transitions and critical points. This is about how systems can suddenly change behavior when certain conditions are met. In physics, it's like water turning to ice. In starling flocks, it's when they suddenly change direction or density.

And in markets, I'm guessing this relates to crashes and bubbles.

You've got it. Think about the dot com bubbles collapse. For months, valuations kept stretching higher without triggering a systemic response. Then, seemingly overnight, the entire market psychology shifted. The system had reached a critical point where local interactions suddenly produced dramatically different global behavior.

That's a really interesting way to think about market crashes. What's the third principle?

The third principle is scale free behavior and power laws. This one's a bit more technical, but bear with me. Essentially it means that the patterns you see in a small group repeat themselves in larger groups, just at different scales.

Okay, I'm following, but how does this apply to markets?

Well, it challenges the idea of normal distributions that we often assume in financial models. Instead, market movements follow power law distributions. The same patterns repeat at different scales, from minute by minute movements to decade long trends.

That sounds like it could have huge implications for how we model risk in the financial world.

Absolutely. It means that those black swan events, extreme market movements, happen far more frequently than traditional models predict. This has enormous implications for risk management strategies.

I can see why this would be crucial for investors to understand. What's the fourth principle?

The fourth principle is feedback loops and adaptation. In starling flocks, each bird's movement affects its neighbors, creating ripples of influence throughout the flock. This allows the flock to adapt to changing conditions in real time.

And how does this play out in financial markets?

A great example is the rise of passive investing. As more capital flows into index funds, the stocks in major indices experience increased buying pressure, improving their performance, which in turn attracts more passive investment. It's a feedback loop that has fundamentally altered market dynamics and that makes a lot of sense.

I've heard a lot about the growth of passive investing in recent years. And the final principle, the fifth principle.

Is emergence and unintended consequences. This is about how complex system wide behaviors arise from simple individual rules. No single starling intends to create those beautiful patterns we see. They emerge from countless local interactions.

Let me guess. The same thing happens in markets.

You've got it. Market phenomena often emerge in ways no individual participant intends. Parisi uses the example of high frequency trading. Each firm developed algorithms to execute trades more efficiently, but collectively they created an entirely new market microstructure with its own emergent properties.

This is all fascinating, but I'm wondering how investors can actually use these insights in their day to day decision making.

That's a great question. Parisi offers several practical applications for indicator development. He recommends tracking changes in correlation patterns across assets, monitoring the strength of feedback loops in your sector, and looking for signs of approaching phase transitions.

Those sound like they could be powerful tools. What about risk management?

For risk management, he suggests building portfolios that are robust to phase transitions, understanding that extreme events are more common than normal distributions suggest and monitoring local information networks for early warning signs.

And how about strategy evolution? How can investors adapt their approaches based on these principles?

Parisi recommends adapting strategies to work with, not against, emergent properties, considering how your actions might contribute to system wide feedback loops, and looking for opportunities created by others. Misunderstanding of Complex System Dynamics this all sounds incredibly powerful.

Can you give us an example of how these principles played out in a recent market event?

Absolutely. The March 2020 market crash and subsequent recovery is a perfect demonstration of complex system dynamics. Local interactions, individual Covid cases created global effects. The market hit a phase transition point when lockdowns began and feedback loops like Fed intervention and retail trading drove the recovery.

It's amazing how well this framework seems to explain what happened. But what does this mean for the future of investing?

Well, Parisi believes that understanding markets as complex adaptive systems gives us a powerful framework for analysis that helps explain why traditional models often fail and suggest more effective approaches to investment strategy.

This has been absolutely fascinating. It's really changed how I think about markets. Any final thoughts on how investors can apply these insights?

Parisi leaves us with an interesting perspective. He says that just as no starling comprehends the entire murmuration, we don't need to understand every aspect of the market to navigate it successfully. We just need to understand the principles that govern its behavior.

As a complex system, that's a powerful insight. It's humbling, but also liberating in a way.

Absolutely. And it opens up so many new avenues for research and strategy development. I think we'll be unpacking the implications of this for years to come.

No doubt. Well, as we wrap up, what do you think are the key takeaways for our listeners?

I'd say the main takeaway is that markets are far more complex and interconnected than traditional models suggest. Investors need to be aware of feedback loops, emergent behaviors, and the potential for sudden phase transitions. It's about developing a more nuanced, adaptive approach to investing.

And I think it's also about recognizing the limits of our knowledge. We can't predict everything, but we can build strategies that are robust to uncertainty.

Exactly. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Remember, whether you're watching birds or watching stocks, it's all about understanding the bigger picture. Until next time, happy investing and maybe take a moment to appreciate those Starling murmurations. All the best from me, Jeff Robinson and the investment analyst.com and me.

Hope always here to give Jeff a little bit of grief about what he says. Have a good rest of day.

Thanks for listening to the Future Finance show and thanks to our sponsor, QFLO AI if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review on your podcast platform of choice. And may your robot overlords be with you.