CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS
YOUTUBE
X
LINKEDIN
YOUTUBE
X
LINKEDIN
-
BEHAVIORAL FINANCE IN THE DIGITAL AGE: PEOPLE, MONEY, TECHNOLOGY AND INVESTMENT DECISIONS
This program addresses the classical behavioral finance approach together with investor behavior, digital finance, fintech, artificial intelligence, and long-term investment discipline.
Purpose of the Program: Our financial decisions are not shaped by information and analysis alone. People's emotions, cognitive biases, habits, and social environments significantly influence investment and money decisions.
The digital age carries these behaviors to a new dimension. Social media, algorithms, financial technology applications, digital investment platforms, and artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming how investors access information and make decisions.
This program addresses the classical behavioral finance approach together with investor behavior, digital finance, fintech, artificial intelligence, and long-term investment discipline.
The aim is not only to recognize behavioral biases, but to be able to build systems that make our own financial decisions healthier and more disciplined.
Program Approach: Unlike a classical academic behavioral finance course, this program will be built on theory, experiments, real-life examples and investment applications.
Participants will test their own decision-making mechanisms through:
- Short behavioral experiments
- Real market examples
- Digital finance applications
- Social media examples
- AI applications
- Investment decision scenarios
The cognitive biases, emotional biases, social interaction, and investor behavior topics covered in previous years' CEF program will be retained; however, the content will be carried into a more current and application-oriented structure.
BY THE END OF THE PROGRAM, PARTICIPANTS WILL BE ABLE TO:
- Recognize the fundamental behavioral biases affecting their financial decisions
- Analyze their own investor behavior
- Evaluate the impact of social media and digital platforms on decisions
- Question fintech and AI tools from a behavioral perspective
- Distinguish between information and noise in the digital age
- Build systems and good habits for more disciplined, long-term investment decisions
- Develop an easily applicable long-term financial plan
Application: Participants will evaluate their own investment behavior and answer the questions: "What is my most significant behavioral mistake?" and "What kind of system can I build for myself to reduce it?"
Key Message of the Program "To make better investment decisions, we must first understand ourselves — not the markets." Attila Köksal, CFA
The training will be held on 1-3-8 December 2026 between 19:30-21:30 on Zoom, and on 13 December 2026 between 13:00-15:00 at Sabancı Center, 4 Levent.
-
SESSION 1 – WHY AREN’T HUMANS RATIONAL?
Humans, the Brain, and Financial Decisions
- Homo Economicus and real human behavior
- Introduction to behavioral finance
- Bounded rationality
- System 1 and System 2
- Heuristics people use when making decisions
- Cognitive and emotional biases
- Loss aversion
- Overconfidence
- Anchoring
- Availability and representativeness
- Status quo bias and regret aversion
- Herd behavior and FOMO
Key question: Do we really make our own financial decisions, or do our brains and environment decide for us?
SESSION 2 – HOW IS THE DIGITAL WORLD CHANGING OUR BEHAVIOR?
Social Media, Algorithms, and Fintech
- Investor behavior in the digital age
- Social media and investment decisions
- FOMO and digital herd behavior
- Social comparison and investor psychology
- The attention economy
- The impact of financial apps on our behavior
- Gamification and investing
- How algorithms steer us
- Nudge and Dark Nudge
- Separating information from noise in digital environments
- Fintech's impact on investor behavior
Key question: Does technology make investors more rational, or does it make our behavioral weaknesses more visible and exploitable?
SESSION 3 – AI, FINTECH, AND THE NEW INVESTOR
How Technology Is Changing Our Investment Decisions
- The new investment world
- Digital investment platforms
- ETFs and low-cost investment instruments
- Robo-advisory and algorithmic investing
- Tokenization and crypto assets
- Artificial intelligence and investment decisions
- Accessing information and analysis with AI
- AI's potential to reduce investor mistakes
- Misuse of AI and overconfidence
- Confirmation bias and AI
- The fallacy of "AI gives me the right answer"
- Human + AI: Are better investment decisions possible?
Key question: Can artificial intelligence genuinely improve our investment decisions, or might it further reinforce our existing biases?
SESSION 4 – FROM BEHAVIOR TO ACTION
Building a System for Better Financial Decisions
This in-person session will be where the concepts learned in the previous three sessions are put into practice.
- The fundamental mistakes we make with money
- The importance of habits
- The cost of short-term thinking
- Long-term investing and compound returns
- Systematic errors in investor behavior
- Behavioral interventions
- Self-nudging: How can we guide ourselves toward the right behavior?
- Mental accounting
- Automatic savings and investment systems
- Investor behavior checklist
- The Two-Portfolio Approach: Investment portfolio / Trading portfolio
- Building a personal financial decision-making system
