BetterMind Alumni | Batch June 2024
Johnny Lu
Business Management, Binghamton University School of Management
Making Sense of Risk
Johnny didn’t start with the goal of building a finance tool. He started with a question that felt harder to pin down.
How do you reason about risk in a way that’s structured, but still grounded in reality?
Finance concepts like expected return, volatility, and market behavior were familiar in theory. What wasn’t as clear was how those ideas interacted when applied to real data, over time, under changing conditions.
“I understood the definitions,” he says, “but I wanted to see how they actually played out.”
That curiosity shaped his approach.
From Concepts to Relationships
As Johnny worked through the underlying model, his focus shifted away from formulas and toward relationships.
How individual assets move relative to the market. Why some behave predictably while others don’t. What it actually means for something to be “risk-free” when compared against broader market behavior. Seeing these ideas mapped to historical data forced him to think more carefully.
“It wasn’t just about calculating something correctly,” he reflects. “It was about understanding what the numbers were saying.”
That distinction mattered. It changed how he read results and how seriously he questioned them.
Learning to Trust (and Question) Outputs
One of the quieter lessons came from visualizing data. When trends appeared clean, Johnny learned not to accept them immediately. When outputs differed based on time range or selected assets, he had to pause and ask why. Small changes in input often led to noticeably different interpretations.
“That made me more cautious,” he says. “I stopped assuming the model was right just because it ran.”
Instead of treating results as answers, he began treating them as prompts. Starting points for reasoning rather than conclusions.
Thinking in Systems, Not Screens
Over time, Johnny’s perspective widened. The work wasn’t just about calculations or interfaces. It was about helping someone reason through uncertainty. He began thinking about how users might interpret information. What comparisons were helpful. What could be misleading if taken at face value. What context was necessary to avoid false confidence.
“I started thinking less like a builder and more like a user,” he notes.
Looking Back
Johnny doesn’t describe the experience as transformative. There was no dramatic shift, no sudden certainty.
Just clarity. Clearer thinking. More deliberate reasoning. A stronger instinct to question what he sees before accepting it.
And for him, that way of thinking is something he expects to carry forward, long after the project itself fades into the background.
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