Nobel Laureate Robert Merton on the Financial Markets

Featuring Robert C. Merton, PhD, Nobel Laureate and Resident Scientist at Dimensional   |   Gerard O’Reilly, PhD, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chief Investment Officer   |   Mark Gochnour, Head of Global Client Services Group

Nobel Laureate Robert Merton on the Financial Markets
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Apr 21, 2020

Topic

Equity Investing Investment Principles Market Volatility

Nobel laureate and Dimensional Resident Scientist Robert C. Merton discusses the current financial markets and the role of skilled implementation during periods of extreme market volatility.

Recording Time Stamps

(1:11)   Robert Merton: Background, Dimensional, and current research
(8:05)   Three ways to manage investment risk
(12:53)   What is the VIX and its relation to market prices?
(17:40)   Current VIX observations
(28:11)   Volatility during the 2008–2009 Crisis
(32:33)   Volatility options globally and other asset classes
(36:50)   How Dimensional uses information in market prices
(40:19)   Market price reactions to new information
(53:00)   Risk and uncertainty and tools to manage them


Professor Merton teaches at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives. He is Resident Scientist at Dimensional Holdings Inc. This webcast was recorded on April 21, 2020.