Investment Performance, Built for Markets
Sasha Dickson speaks on the psychology and behaviour behind sustained performance in professional investors.
Her work brings together direct market experience, evidence-based coaching and current Cambridge research to explore what investment performance demands of individuals, leaders and teams.
A Distinct Perspective
Over the past few decades, investment performance has been coached with tools borrowed from outside the industry. Those tools have contributed a great deal, but markets present conditions that other high-performance fields were not designed to address: continuous exposure, noisy short-term feedback and decisions made with real capital at risk.
Drawing on 25 years across markets and human development, Sasha makes the case for investment performance science: a discipline built around how professional investors actually think, decide and endure.
Her talks translate complex research and lived experience into clear, practical ideas that audiences can apply immediately.
Flagship Keynote
The Missing Discipline: why investment performance needs its own science
Finance often borrows performance tools from outside the industry. But this approach has a ceiling.
Investors work in conditions no other high-performance field has to manage: continuous exposure, no natural breaks, punishing noise-to-signal ratios, massive attentional and cognitive loads, complex performance decisions made in real time, while real capital is at risk, and a whole person emotional state that shapes every call.
Drawing on direct market experience and current Cambridge research, Sasha introduces investment performance science and offers a practical framework for developing sustained performance built specifically for markets.
Audience Takeaways
Why investment performance is structurally different from other high-performance disciplines
How borrowed tools can harm not help sustainable investment performance
Simple but powerful emotion regulation and cognitive discipline tools that can be used straightaway
A practical framework for developing sustained performance across individuals and teams
Further speaking topics
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Let's talk about feelings: emotional engagement as an investing edge
Emotions aren’t the enemy of good investing - unmanaged emotions are. Sasha shows why engaging with emotions is a performance advantage and shares techniques investors can apply immediately. Includes the fascinating science of how physiology and interoception shape risk-taking.
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The performance equation: why you repeat mistakes and how to stop
Inconsistent or suboptimal performance isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s a pattern problem. Sasha reveals the hidden behavioural systems, beyond behavioural finance biases, that cause repeated mistakes and how you can start to redesign them for better outcomes.
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Decision-making: protecting and developing decision quality under pressure
How the best investors protect the quality of their decisions when markets, and emotions are at their most volatile. Sasha shares practical, evidence-based techniques that reduce the errors that quietly erode returns.
Speaking Formats
Keynote Presentations
Original, research-led talks for investment conferences, leadership events and company offsites. Each presentation combines a distinctive argument with practical applications for professional investors and their leaders.
Fireside Chats and Panels
Thoughtful, candid conversations on investment performance, decision-making under pressure, leadership and the psychology of markets. Sasha brings the perspective of both a market practitioner and a performance specialist.
Online Webinars
Interactive virtual sessions for investment firms, professional associations and leadership teams. Content can be tailored to the audience, with time for discussion and practical application.
Sasha is available for conferences, investment firm offsites, leadership events, panels and private gatherings in Asia, the UK and internationally.
To discuss your audience, objectives and preferred format, please get in touch.