Speaking Engagements

Speaker Profile

Erik Kobayashi-Solomon is an engaging speaker and presenter with deep experience in the financial markets. His 2014 book, The Intelligent Option Investor: Applying Value Investing to the World of Options (McGraw-Hill), covers three areas:

  • Avoiding behavioral biases in investing
  • Building a sound, repeatable framework for valuing companies
  • Understanding how options are priced and transacted and how they can be used to effect value investing strategies.

He is the founder and managing director of IOI Capital, a private investment partnership focused on funding private and public firms that offer products and services to help adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. He has done deep research into firms in AgTech, carbon capture and sequestration, vertical farming, and algae cultivation.

Over his 20+ year career in the financial services, Mr. Kobayashi-Solomon has served as the market risk manager for a global long-short equity hedge fund, the head of Morningstar’s semiconductor research team and later as Morningstar’s market strategist, and as the architect for the International Financial Corporation’s (World Bank Group) standardized valuation model for emerging market private equity investments.

A popular speaker and panelist, a few of his notable engagements have included:

  • Turnaround Management Association NY City Chapter (panel discussion about climate change investing)
  • National Gateway Group Conference (presentation to registered investment advisors about climate change investing)
  • BlackRock Income and Value Team (behavioral biases in investing)
  • New York Society of Security Analysts (value investing using options)
  • University of Chicago (investment strategies using options)
  • Northwestern University (corporate valuation and value investing)
  • Manual of Ideas Author Series (value investing using options)

Mr. Kobayashi-Solomon has been quoted in such prestigious periodicals as The Financial Times and Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun and has appeared on television and radio numerous times. He is a contributor to Forbes, where he writes a popular column about climate change investing.

Excerpts from Prior Engagements

Climate Change Investing

The sample here is an excerpt from a presentation made to the national Gateway Group Conference of registered investment advisors in October 2018.

Contact Us to inquire about booking Erik for your organization.

Erik has been alerting the investing public to the importance of factoring climate change into investment decisions since 2018 through his popular Forbes.com column. Erik’s expertise in this area has been recognized globally, and he has been quoted by the Financial Times and CBS News, among others.

His presentations can be tailored to your organization’s particular needs, and focus on the controversial topics below:

  • The certainties of climate science in layman’s terms
  • How ESG investing fails to address the urgency and severity of climate change
  • Why “forever matters” when it comes to companies’ current stock prices
  • Finding opportunities in ventures focused on helping society adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change

Behavioral Biases in Investing

This is an excerpt from a presentation made to BlackRock’s global Value & Income and Growth Investment Teams by Erik Kobayashi-Solomon in August 2019.

Contact Us to inquire about booking Erik for your organization.

Warren Buffett once commented that an investor only needed “…a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework” in order to be successful.

Unfortunately, a few hundred thousand years of evolution means that hard-wired behavioral biases can confound even a professional investor’s ability to make sound decisions in times of stress. 

Erik’s talks focus on recognizing biases, awakening to their impact on making good decisions, and avoiding harmful biases to the extent possible. Specifically, he covers…

  • Understanding the two human pathways to decision-making, the X-System and the C-System
  • Showing how to protect oneself from data overload
  • The three most important behavioral biases that degrade investment decision-making performance
  • Practical advice for professional and individual investors trying to inoculate themselves from bias

Intelligent Option Investing

This is an excerpt from a presentation made to the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) in June 2015.

Contact Us to inquire about booking Erik for your organization.

In the Intelligent Investor, the patron saint of Value Investing, Benjamin Graham writes about how stocks were considered too speculative for prudent investors in the 1950s.

Erik’s groundbreaking book and his presentations on the topic explain why he thinks investors today not using options are missing out as much as investors in the 1950s who shied away from stocks.

The main thrust of his talks is straightforward:

  • Options are simple, directional instruments conceptually much like stocks or ETFs but which offer investors much greater flexibility.
  • Option pricing – far from being scary and arcane – is simple and can be understood fully by an interested layperson in 15 minutes or less.
  • Intelligent investing using options allows an investor to build a portfolio in much the same way a chef builds a fine meal; stocks and bonds provide meat and potatoes, while options provide the sauces and spices that make the meal interesting.
  • Options are peerless instruments for boosting returns, protecting gains, and generating income. But to do those things effectively, an investor needs a good understanding of how the tools work.