How To Invest In The Stock Market Like A Brainiac Economist

Corporations and government agencies hire brainiac economists with doctorate degrees to guide them through a morass of hundreds — if not thousands of numbers — to help develop policies and make investment decisions. Despite unwavering respect for their insights, economists are notorious for looking at the same data and coming to polar opposite conclusions. As the old joke goes: “Economics is the only field in which two people can win a Nobel Prize for saying the opposite thing.”

When it comes to investing in the stock market, however, anecdotal responses from the elite with PhDs show they surprisingly agree on a similar course of action. Economists from universities, asset management firms and private organizations alike were asked to reveal what they own in their portfolios and why. Indeed, they have a strategy for maximizing potential returns while minimizing risks and costs.

US-British economist Angus Deaton won the Nobel Economics Prize for work using household surveys to show how consumers decide what to buy and how policymakers can help them. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)