MiB: Peter Atwater, Financial Insyghts

This week, we speak with Peter Atwater, president of Financial Insyghts and an adjunct professor at William & Mary and the University of Delaware. He studies the impact of changing confidence on consumer decision-making and advises investors, businesses and policymakers. He coined the term “K-shaped recovery” to describe the pandemic’s effects on the economy. Atwater previously ran JPMorgan’s asset-backed securities business and served in executive roles at First USA, Bank One and Juniper Financial. He is the author of several books on investing confidence, most recently The Confidence Map: Charting a Path from Chaos to Clarity.

Atwater coined the phrase “K-Shaped Recovery” to describe confidence-divide between the top and bottom of the economy post-pandemic. The work from home confidence divide was both revealed and amplified by the pandemic. He points out the ramifications when society suffer from low confidence in both politics and economics can be very significant.

Following major events like the January 6 insurrection, there are five natural reactions that reflect sentiment: “Flight, Flight, Freeze, Follow, and F*ck it.”

His books can be seen here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Joel Tillinghast of Fidelity, where since 1989, he has managed the Fidelity Low-Priced Stock Fund (and others). Over his 32-year tenure, the fund has beaten 100% of peers, and outperformed the Russell 2000 benchmark by 3.49% annually, and has more than doubled the performance of the S&P 500.