Forget lengthy disclosures. There’s nothing like punctuation to ward off investors.
According to Bank of Israel research published Tuesday, the simple addition of an exclamation mark to the names of some mutual funds led to significant declines in net flows as retail investors grew warier. The bank calls it the “Exclamation Mark of Cain.”
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Venkat is a senior manager in the Tax Technology and Transformation practice of Ernst & Young LLP (EY US), where she helps to define the digital strategy for the US firm's indirect tax platform and wider innovation agenda. Drawing on deep experience in AI, data engineering and cloud architecture, she leads cross-functional teams that translate complex tax requirements into agile, client-ready solutions, keeping EY US at the vanguard of tax modernization. Venkat works with tax executives to build enterprise-scale data lakes and embed agentic automation for real-time insight, reinforcing trusted delivery to businesses worldwide. She holds an MS in Information Management from Syracuse University and a B.Tech in Information Technology from Anna University.
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Brent McIntosh is Citi's chief legal officer and corporate secretary. Brent leads Citi's Global Legal Affairs & Compliance organization, which includes the Legal Department, Independent Compliance Risk Management, Citi Security and Investigative Services and Citi's Regulatory Strategy and Policy function. He is a member of Citi's Executive Management Team.
Brent served as under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs from 2019 to 2021. From 2017 to 2019, Brent served as Treasury's general counsel. Prior to that, he was a partner in the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell.
Brent served in the White House from 2006 until 2009, first as associate counsel to the president and then as deputy assistant to the president and deputy staff secretary. Before that, he was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.
January 23
While conventional theories on decision-making hold that investment strategies should be made following rational analysis of qualities like risk, return, or fees, the research paper published Tuesday shows presentation can shape investment behavior.
The paper draws on a study of a 2010 Israel Securities Authority reform that required fund managers to add an exclamation mark to the names of mutual funds allowed to hold high-yield corporate bonds beyond their maximum exposure to equity investments. Only the risk salience was affected, not the fundamentals or information available.
However, the name change also created another impact.
Funds that added an exclamation mark boosted junk bond holdings significantly. “We leave
the further investigation of this behavior to future research,” the researchers wrote.
