Eugene Fama – Building a Life

Few economists have had a greater influence on how we think about the markets and how we structure client portfolios than Gene Fama.  We’ve written about Fama and his work before, first to congratulate him on receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in November of last year, and later to acknowledge the deep influence he’s had on the founders of Dimensional Fund Advisors and the subsequent development of that firm’s investment offerings.  While in graduate school in the early 1990s, Dave became an early fan of the work of Fama and his collaborator Ken French as they developed the “Three-Factor Model,” finding the insights compelling and incorporating them into client portfolios from the start.  This, even before discovering Dimensional Fund Advisors and their Fama-inspired fund portfolios. We bring this up now because we’ve come across a brief, seven minute video in which Gene Fama discusses his life, how he came to be an economist, and some of the sources of his greatest insights.  Along the way, he shares anecdotes from his personal life, growing up, going to school (he was originally planning to earn a PhD in French literature), meeting his wife (who also appears in the film), his mentors, and mentees (including David Booth, cofounder of DFA).  We hope you enjoy this brief video and believe you’ll decide it’s well worth seven minutes of your time.