Undergraduate investments and portfolio management courses have traditionally prescribed the optimal choices for rational economic man—a creature who does not exist. Real portfolio choices, especially those by retail investors, are made by “normal” people, and normal people exhibit...

Repurchase agreements are critical financing tools that lubricate the financial system. They have been complicit in financial crises, yet they may hold the key to post-recession “normalization.” Despite their importance in practice, they are all but ignored in the traditional undergraduate...