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People in the Massachusetts biotechnology sector figured that the record-setting success of 2018 would be hard to match. So far, they're proving right.

After collectively raising $4.8 billion of venture capital last year, an all-time high, Bay State biotechs are on pace to raise less than $3 billion in 2019, according to a report published Tuesday by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a leading industry group.

Elizabeth Steele, MassBio's vice president of programs and global affairs, said the venture climate is merely "coming back to normal" after an "insane" 2018. A total of about $3 billion would be in line with the average from 2015 to 2017.

But Andrew Lo, a biotech investor who directs the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, said he is "a bit more concerned."

Listen to Part 1 of our latest sponsored Top Traders Round Table podcast featuring Andrew Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Sol Waksman, the President of the Backstop BarclayHedge Division. These guests have years of experience in the world of investing and have watched the finance industry as it has gone through many changes.

On the Thursday, January 24 edition of Bloomberg Baystate Business we spoke with Bloomberg Intelligence gaming and lodging analyst Brian Egger about MGM-Springfield, the latest on the Wynn saga, and sports betting. Rob Almeida of MFS stopped by to talk about the markets. Bloomberg News endowments reporter Michael McDonald joined us to talk about his story on Baupost Group’s Seth Klarman, who sees opportunity in the markets. Boston Business Journal real estate editor Catherine Carlock talked about the commercial real estate market in Boston. Finally, MIT’s Andrew Lo talked about technology, finance and investing. Hosts: Peter Barnes, Janet Wu and Pat Carroll. Producer: Dan Pierce.

Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, dialled in from Boston to talk about regulation, markets and the future of machine learning.

Lo pioneered the adaptive markets hypothesis, which describes markets as a complex evolutionary ecosystem, populated by different stakeholders that adapt to changes on the basis of certain behavioural traits and biases.

There's big money in biotech in the Greater Boston area. Last year, venture capital firms invested more than $3 billion in the state's biotech and pharmaceutical companies, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. The amount has risen every year since 2012. Local companies have already produced revolutionary treatments for rare diseases, cancer and more. And there's promise and hope for cures and treatments still to come. Because of that, there's no shortage of capital.Biotech companies often go public even if they haven't yet put a product on the market, let alone turned a profit. MIT finance professor Andrew Lo says there's good reason for so much exuberance.

Economist Andrew Lo talks to the FT's John Authers about his adaptive markets hypothesis, the idea that markets develop and adapt over time and should be modelled using concepts from biology instead of physics. It's the subject of his recent book, Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought.

There are two popular schools of thought when it comes to how markets work. There's the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) which says that it's basically impossible to beat the market, because all information is completely priced in at all times (more or less). On the other side is an increasingly popular behavioral view which argues that various human emotions and biases are always creating situations that aren't justified by the data. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Andrew Lo, a professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management about his own theory, which he calls Adaptive Markets. The theory attempts to bridge the behavioral approach with the efficient markets view. He argues that the proper way to view the market is through an ecological lens, examining the players as flora and fauna of a complicated system, to help determine who's thriving, who's dying, and where asset prices will go.

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “‘How Much Brain Damage Do I Have?’” John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly retired. Here’s the inside story — and a look at how we make decisions in the face of risk versus uncertainty.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Andrew Lo, director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering and the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Lo holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University and a doctorate in economics from Harvard University. This commentary aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Andrew Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering. In his research, he straps sensors to traders and watches how their pulses and body temperatures change when markets dive or trades go bad. The technology could be used elsewhere in a bank to potentially address problems before they escalate.