Peter L. Bernstein
Founder and President of Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., which he established in 1973 as economic consultants to institutional investors and corporations around the world.
In 1951, after teaching economics at Williams College and a five-year stint in commercial banking, Peter became Chief Executive of a nationally–known investment counsel firm, where he personally managed billions of dollars of individual and institutional portfolios. The assets under management at the firm had grown more than tenfold by the time he resigned in 1973 to launch Peter L. Bernstein, Inc.
Peter was the first Editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management in 1974, a widely-read scholarly journal for investment managers and academics in the field of finance and investments. He is now Consulting Editor of the Journal.
He served for many years on the Visiting Committee to the Economics Department at Harvard University, as a Trustee and member of the Finance Committee of the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF), and as a Trustee of the Investment Management Workshop sponsored by the Association for Investment Management & Research’(AIMR).
He is the author of nine books in economics and finance plus countless articles in professional journals such as The Harvard Business Review and the Financial Analysts Journal, and in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Worth Magazine, and Bloomberg publications. He has contributed to collections of articles published by Perseus and FT Mastering, among others
He lectures widely throughout the United States and abroad on risk management, asset allocation, portfolio strategy, and market history.
Peter graduated from Harvard College with a degree in economics, magna cum laude. He was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
After serving as a member of the research staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and in a civilian capacity at the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, he joined the armed services and rose to the rank of captain in the Air Force in World War II, assigned to the Office of Strategic Services in the European theater.
He taught economics for many years as an adjunct professor on the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York.
Peter has received three major awards from the Association for Investment Management & Research (AIMR), the key organization for investment managers and analysts:
The Award for Professional Excellence, AIMR's highest award,
The Graham & Dodd Award, given annually for the outstanding article in the Financial Analysts Journal for the previous year, and
The James R. Vertin Award, recognizing individuals who have produced a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals.
“The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about. And that story helps define what it means to be a human being.”
“Our lives teem with numbers, but we sometimes forget that numberss are only tools. They have no soul; they may indeed become fetishes.”
“The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay”