Wharton@Work

February 2026 | 

Jules van Binsbergen on Finance Skills and Jazz Piano

Jules Van Binsbergen on Finance Skills and Jazz Piano

Wharton finance professor and Lauder Institute Director Jules van Binsbergen teaches in a range of Wharton Executive Education programs, working with finance professionals who want to sharpen how they think about markets, value, and decision making. He also co-hosts the award-winning podcast All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions. The academic director of Investment Strategies and Portfolio Management brings his research on investment skills and performance directly into the classroom, challenging executives to rethink competition in financial markets and what it really requires to capture value. As the sixth subject in our Spotlight series, he shares his thoughts on those subjects and where he’s likely to be found when he’s not working.

Wharton@Work: Your research challenges how finance traditionally measures investment skill and performance. What’s the most common misconception you’ve tried to dispel?

Jules van Binsbergen: One of the biggest misconceptions is that the question of whether an investment manager is skilled is the same as the question of whether investors benefit from that skill. Those are actually two very different things. A manager can be highly skilled and still extract most or all of the value they create through fees and compensation. In that case, the outside investors don’t necessarily benefit at all.

What we find is that financial markets are extremely competitive. Many investors want access to the same managers, and that competition gives managers a strong negotiating position. As a result, managers often capture the rents themselves, leaving investors essentially indifferent between investing with that manager or investing in an index fund.

W@W: Is that one of the moments in your sessions when you can almost see people thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me”?

JV: Yes, absolutely. I often explain it this way: if you don’t bring anything special to the table in a negotiation or economic relationship, the best you can hope for is a fair deal. The idea that you would earn extra returns, what we call alpha, just by showing up with investable money doesn’t really hold up once you think it through.

When people realize that the only thing they’re bringing to the table is capital, and that many other investors have capital too, they start to rethink their expectations. Initially it feels counterintuitive, but with a bit of reflection, it becomes much more intuitive.

W@W: That idea seems to apply far beyond investing. Where else does it apply?

JV: The labor market is a great example. One reason people come to Wharton is because they want to develop skills that make them distinctive. If you don’t have skills that set you apart, if what you can do is what everyone else can do, it can be harder to land a coveted position or command a higher wage. So, most of us are trying to develop specific talents that give us bargaining power. The same logic applies in investing, careers, and really any competitive environment.

W@W: So for someone coming to a week-long program such as Investment Strategies and Portfolio Management, the goal is similar?

JV: Yes, exactly. One of the advantages of executive education is that participants usually know what they’re missing. Unlike undergraduates or MBA students, who are still discovering different areas of business, executives come in saying, “I consistently feel underprepared in this area.” Executive education allows them to focus intensively, for a short period of time, on filling a very specific gap in their knowledge or skill set. That focus is incredibly powerful.

W@W: A lot of people are trying to make sense of today’s markets, including whether we’re in a bubble. How do you help people think about that?

JV: I often turn the question around. Financial markets are essentially the consensus opinion of a very large group of sophisticated participants. It’s similar to medicine: if thousands of doctors agree on a diagnosis, you should be cautious before deciding they’re all wrong — unless you have very specific expertise yourself.

That doesn’t mean markets are always right. The madness of crowds can sometimes be — well — maddening. But it does mean that disagreeing with the market requires exceptional knowledge and preparation. If something were obviously overvalued, it wouldn’t be priced that way in the first place.

W@W: Does that perspective resonate in the classroom with experienced investors?

JV: Very much so. We have a lot of debates about it. Human beings tend to think they’re better than average at most things — driving is a classic example. It’s tempting to believe you know better than the market.

I’m not saying there aren’t people who do know better. They exist. But assuming you’re one of them without the skills or homework is like assuming you’re a better-than-average driver without ever having taken driving lessons. That’s a tough argument to make.

W@W: It sounds like there’s a deeply human side to financial decision making that often gets overlooked.

JV: Absolutely. People often treat statements like “the market is overvalued” as purely technical conclusions. But there’s a human element in how we decide whom to trust, which voices to listen to, and how we process information.

I use a medical analogy again: would you take advice from an anonymous Reddit post over a trained physician? Probably not. Yet in finance, people are tempted to give equal weight to opinions from very different sources.

Being a critical thinker is important. History shows that expert consensus can be wrong, but the real question is, is it less often wrong than the average opinion? And so, not all opinions should be weighted equally. Curating information — knowing where it comes from and how much weight to give it — has never been more important than today: the stream of information we are confronted with is simply overwhelming.

W@W: In your work you emphasize long-term thinking. Why is it still so hard to do?

JV: The world moves very fast. Social media, news cycles, and professional pressure all push people toward short-term thinking. But there’s no shortage of long-term challenges facing society and markets.

Universities offer something increasingly rare: time to slow down, think carefully, and work on those long-term problems. Many of the leaders who come to Wharton tell me it feels like an oasis — a chance to step away from the day-to-day grind. They enjoy having time to acquire new knowledge, debate ideas with peers, and gain perspective.

Some leave with very concrete takeaways they can apply immediately. Others leave with something less tangible but equally valuable: a clearer understanding of where they fit in the system and what they’re trying to achieve in the long run.

W@W: What would your students be most surprised to see you doing in your downtime?

JV: I was simultaneously enrolled in two undergraduate programs — one in financial econometrics and one in jazz piano. I studied jazz piano at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and music is still my sanctuary. There’s actually a nice parallel with academic work. Teaching is like classical music: you’re performing the field’s best thinking as well as you can, to the point of perfection. Research is more like jazz or composition — creating something new that didn’t exist before. After you finish a paper, something is out there in the world that wasn’t there before, and that’s very satisfying.