Peter Atwater

Peter Atwater is the President of Financial Insyghts and a researcher of confidence-driven decision making.

Through his firm, Financial Insyghts, Peter advises institutional investors, corporations, and public policy makers on how social mood affects decision making and the markets. Atwater demonstrates, no matter your field, understanding how changes in confidence naturally impact consumer preferences is critical to success. Atwater enables people to see how mood impacts decision making at both an individual and a group level.

In his 2014 Ted Talk, well before the rise of Donald Trump, Atwater identified chronic “underconfidence” as a major cause for concern, because now voters have naturally-divergent, mood-driven preferences. To Atwater, it is not the economic and political differences that are worrisome, but the extreme confidence divide in America. Professor Atwater’s research on the connection of social mood and market behavior served as base for his book, Moods and Markets, which provides specific practical insights for investors on how changes in confidence drive the capital markets.

Peter had a successful career on Wall Street, including thirteen years with JPMorgan building the firm’s asset-backed securities. He then became the Treasurer of Bank One at age 35,and later served as the Chief Operating Officer of the bank’s asset management business. As CEO of Bank One Private Clients Services, Atwater oversaw a $850 million business with 2,400 employees across more than 100 offices. Peter then went on to serve as Chief Financial Officer of start-up credit card company, Juniper Financial, helping in the sale of the business to Barclays PLC.

Atwater can be seen regularly on Bloomberg Television and he is quoted frequently by the financial media. Peter’s research has been profiled by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times and Rana Foroohar in Time Magazine.

Serves as an adjunct professor of at the College of William and Mary and University of Delaware. Atwater holds a BA in Economics from the College of William and Mary.