Denise Shull on Emotions as a Dataset and Avoiding Investment Mistakes

Denise Shull is the Founder and CEO of ReThink. In that role, she uses neuroscience and modern psychoanalysis to help clients become successful in investing, trading, and leading teams. She has consulted on the development of Showtime’s BILLIONS, coached Olympic champions, and often appears on CNBC, Bloomberg and in the Wall Street Journal. Before ReThink, Denise worked in finance. She started at one of the first electronic trading firms in Chicago, then traded at Schonfeld Securities before she ran her own desk at Sharpe Capital. Denise holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago. Her thesis was cited in 2013 as one of the first papers written about neuropsychoanalysis. In this podcast we discuss: Why understanding perception, judgment and decision-making matters, how your unconscious affects your decision making, the particular challenge of trading and investing in markets, the role of emotions and why we can’t ignore them, and the difference between emotions and impulse. She further discussed how to understand conviction levels, using intuition over impulse, how to incorporate emotions into your dataset, traits of successful traders, and how to set up a hedge fund. On the more personal side she revealed the books that influenced her the most: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (Feldman Barret), and The Drama of the Gifted Child (Miller).