Why Cliff Asness Believes Markets Are Getting Dumber

Are financial markets becoming less efficient? Famous investor Cliff Asness certainly thinks so. In his paper published last year, “The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis,” Asness argues that social media and low interest rates, among other factors, have distorted market information so that stocks have become disconnected from their true values. This distortion has directed funds toward undeserving assets and firms and staved off necessary market corrections.

Asness is the founder, managing principal, and chief investment officer at AQR Capital Management. He is an active researcher on various financial and investment topics and received an MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. From her early days as a journalist reporting on Wall Street, Bethany recounts Asness as an outspoken, successful quant investor: one who invests based primarily on the fundamentals of the market rather than those of the firm. She also remembers him being “colloquial” and willing to be “experimental” with ideas. Asness’s recent paper continues that experimental style as he challenges the legacy of the efficient market hypothesis on which his PhD advisor, Nobel Prize laureate Eugene Fama, made his name, and which argues that asset prices reflect all available information, making it impossible to “beat” or outperform the market.

Asness joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how the market has fundamentally changed due to new technologies and macroeconomic trends and how investment strategies must adapt, what these changes mean for long-term productivity and growth, how researchers and investors should think about emerging market factors like tariffs and artificial intelligence, and why he's not investing in TrumpCoin anytime soon.

Disclosure: In October 2024, Chicago Booth received a $60 million gift from Cliff Asness and John Liew to name its Master in Finance program.

Bonus: Revisit our recent episode with Eugene Fama, Why This Nobel Economist Thinks Bitcoin is Going to Zero