The Poole College of Management News interviewed Koch about his history and teaching style last month.
You may read the entire interview, here. The article is excerpted, below:
NC State’s new lecturer in finance, Dr. Christian Koch, brings more than 25 years of practical investment management experience to the classroom, and it shows. He takes his students beyond the neat, defined world of theory to discover what works in the uncertainty and complexity of the real world.
How do you strike a balance between theory and balance in the classroom?
I use traditional finance textbooks to ground students in theory while using practice-focused books to offer a different perspective. What investment professionals quickly find is that a lot of elegant finance theories and equations work well in the classroom, where we are assuming ideal conditions and perfect information, but not so well in practice. In real life, we make judgments with messy, incomplete data. When you buy a stock, you may have 70% of the info you need to make an informed decision. I earned a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) a few years ago, and I focused my dissertation research on Warren Buffett’s long-term investment strategy. In the classroom, I integrate insights from Buffett and other successful investors into the conversation so that students are more prepared for what the job looks and feels like in a realistic setting.
“In the classroom, I integrate insights from Buffett and other successful investors into the conversation so that students are more prepared for what the job looks and feels like in a realistic setting.”
What is the most important lesson you try to convey through the assignments and exercises you select?
I try to demonstrate that investing is an art, not a science. Students need to get used to uncertainty and tension. In my BUS 422 investments and portfolio management class, I have found that many of them are not yet used to assignments that have no definitive answer. For example, I will give students five years’ worth of company data, introduce them to an earnings model, and ask them to figure out future earnings per share for that company. Depending on the assumptions they make, they could come up with a range of reasonable answers. It takes many students some time to get used to that context, but it is what they are going to experience in their first job in the near future.
Contact Christian Koch, CFP®, CPWA®, RICP®, CDFA™
President & CEO | KAMSouth
to learn more about how to take control of your financial future:
(404) 843-3745