John Garcia

John Garcia in his office, holding an “I love my job” mug

Associate Professor of Finance & AnalyticsCalifornia Lutheran University

John Garcia

From immigrant field worker roots to finance researcher — bridging industry and academia.

Available for speaking, collaboration, and workshops on finance, analytics, and AI in education.

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Recent Updates

Earlier updates 8 updates
  • June 2026
    Launched Free Faculty Development Course Teaching with Artificial Intelligence

    Created and released a free, self-paced faculty development course on teaching with AI — helping instructors build a teaching-ready portfolio and make defensible choices about AI in their courses.

    View Course
  • June 2026
    Conference Presentation Research Symposium on Finance and Economics (RSFE), Krea University, Sri City, India (Virtual)

    Presented "Algorithmic Anchoring: How Prompt-Embedded Reference Points Bias LLM Financial Estimates."

    Working Paper (SSRN)
  • March 2026
    Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor California Lutheran University

    Effective Fall 2026.

  • March 2026
    Developed Faculty Mentor Training Program School of Management, California Lutheran University

    Designed and authored Business Pathways: Guiding Students from First Year to Launch, a 6-hour, self-paced faculty mentor training program (6 modules, 24 video lessons) built on the CIMER Entering Mentoring framework. Adopted by the School of Management for faculty training and currently being adapted for deployment across the College of Arts and Sciences.

    Open-Source Materials
  • March 2026
    Session Lead & Paper Presentations Southwestern Finance Association (SWFA) Annual Meeting, Dallas, TX

    Took a lead role in delivering a session on integrating artificial intelligence into finance education and presented two working papers.

    Session Resources LLM Agents (SSRN) Retail Trading (SSRN)
  • March 2026
    Working Paper Published SSRN

    "Algorithmic Anchoring: How Prompt-Embedded Reference Points Bias LLM Financial Estimates"

    Read on SSRN
  • January 2026
    Workshop Presentation National Science Foundation Regional AI Workshop, Los Angeles

    Presented "Too Smart to be Human: Can AI Agents Replace us in Behavioral Experiments?"

    Watch Video Download Slides
  • January 2026
    Paper Accepted Review of Behavioral Finance

    "A Stabilizing Force? How Religiosity Moderates the Effect of Sentiment on Stock Liquidity" accepted for publication.

My Story

My story begins in a family shaped by sacrifice, hard work, and the belief that education could open doors. I was born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents and grew up between California and Mexico, becoming the first in my family to graduate from high school and college. Those roots still shape how I see the world.

Before entering academia, I spent more than two decades in finance and analytics leadership roles at Ernst & Young and Toyota, where I learned how data, strategy, and judgment drive real decisions. But at a certain point, I felt called to build something different with the second half of my career. I earned a doctorate and moved into higher education because I wanted to invest in people, not just performance.

Today, as a finance and analytics professor, my work brings together research, teaching, and real-world experience in behavioral finance, machine learning, and AI. At the center of all of it is a simple idea: where you start should never define where you can go.

Areas of Expertise

Finance & Strategy

  • Corporate Finance
  • Behavioral Finance
  • Financial Analysis & Reporting
  • Financial Distress
  • Pricing Strategy

Analytics & Technology

  • Business Analytics
  • Machine Learning
  • Data Mining
  • FinTech
  • Generative AI Literacy

Interdisciplinary Focus

  • AI in Education
  • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Workplace

Education & Credentials

Certifications & Programs

Teaching

I teach across undergraduate, MBA, and EMBA levels, integrating behavioral finance, machine learning, and generative AI into a practitioner-informed, technology-enhanced curriculum. Since joining Cal Lutheran in Fall 2021, I have earned an average instructor rating of 4.72 / 5.0 (median 4.80). I have developed eight new courses and co-created CLU's first undergraduate Data Science program (launched Fall 2024). Course-specific AI tutors I developed are accessed over 1,000 times monthly by students across my courses.

Explore the courses I teach 11 courses
EMBADeveloped
EMBA 502

Strategic Decision Making for High Performance

Single continuous case (RegalTel churn crisis) runs all 8 weeks through a full descriptive → predictive → prescriptive pipeline (Tableau, JMP Pro, board capstone); builds executives as analytics consumers, not practitioners.

GraduateDeveloped
ECON 562 / MBA 580

Advanced Analytics

The most technically demanding course I teach — covering neural networks, ensemble methods, and model deployment — yet consistently earns 5.0 / 5.0 instructor ratings.

GraduateDeveloped
MBA 526

Foundations of Analytics

Students replicate analysis from my published research (PCA in Applied Finance Letters), bridging academic rigor with live business data using JMP Pro.

Graduate
MBA 541

Strategic Financial Analysis

Connects advanced valuation and financial modeling to strategic decision-making; draws directly on industry experience from Toyota and Ernst & Young.

Graduate
MBA 521

Corporate Finance

Grounds corporate finance theory in real-world capital markets, with emphasis on analytical frameworks for complex organizational decisions.

GraduateDeveloped
MBA 503

Foundations of Business Statistics

Features AI-generated podcast-style chapter reviews and avatar-delivered intro lectures to extend learning beyond the classroom for working professionals.

GraduateDeveloped
MBA5STI

Innovations in FinTech

One of the first FinTech courses in the region; integrates blockchain, robo-advising, and AI in financial services with guest practitioners.

Undergraduate
BUS 391

Principles of Finance

Consistently maintains a waitlist; AI Finance Tutor handles 600+ student queries per month, and multimodal resources include Excel toolkits, AI-generated podcasts, and recorded lectures.

UndergraduateDeveloped
BUS 356

Business Analytics II

Advances students into predictive modeling (regression through neural networks) using R and Python; paired with a course-specific AI tutor that students rate more helpful than the textbook.

UndergraduateDeveloped
BUS 256

Business Analytics I

Gateway analytics course now required for all business majors; builds the statistical mindset and data fluency that BUS 356 builds upon.

UndergraduateDeveloped
UNIV-3ST

Generative AI Literacy

Cross-disciplinary course — one of the first at Cal Lutheran — equipping students to use, evaluate, and critically assess AI tools in academic and professional contexts.

Developed marks a course developed or significantly redesigned by John Garcia.

Research & Publications

My research examines how alternative information — social media sentiment, employee reviews, and crowdsourced signals — shapes financial market behavior, and how machine learning can extract actionable insight from this data. An emerging third stream uses large language model agents as experimental subjects to test whether AI systems replicate, or distort, the behavioral biases documented in human traders. Together, these streams sit at the intersection of behavioral finance, computational methods, and the economics of artificial intelligence.

Research Streams

Stream 1 — Alternative Data & Financial Markets

How do non-traditional signals — Twitter sentiment, Glassdoor reviews, crowdsourced earnings forecasts — predict liquidity, financial distress, and investor behavior before conventional indicators do? This stream establishes that "soft" information carries hard economic value, often preceding traditional signals by months, with implications for retail investors, regulators, and corporate managers.

Stream 2 — Computational Methods for Finance

Developing machine learning and NLP tools to extract insight from high-dimensional financial data. Key contributions include a PCA-based valuation uncertainty index that outperforms eleven traditional proxies and novel synthetic sampling techniques for imbalanced bankruptcy prediction data.

Stream 3 — LLM Agents & Experimental Finance Emerging

Using large language model agents — calibrated to empirical distributions from federal consumer finance surveys — as synthetic market participants in controlled behavioral experiments. This program tests whether AI agents reproduce documented anomalies (herding, momentum, overconfidence) or generate novel market dynamics. Working papers include Homo Silicus is Hyper-Rational and Algorithmic Anchoring.

Keywords

  • Investor Sentiment
  • Behavioral Finance
  • Liquidity & Financial Distress
  • Machine Learning in Finance
  • AI in Business Analytics

Current Projects & Working Papers

  1. Revise & Resubmit
    SSRN “Homo Silicus is Hyper-Rational — Why LLM Agents Fail to Replicate Attention-Driven Trading” Garcia, J. Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination
  2. Under Review
    SSRN “Algorithmic Anchoring: How Prompt-Embedded Reference Points Bias LLM Financial Estimates” Garcia, J. Journal of Computational Social Science
  3. Under Review
    “Investor Attention and the Variance Risk Premium: Predictive Content from Search, News, and Social Media” Garcia, J., Bulut, L. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance
  4. Under Review
    “Same Benchmark, Different Leverage: Robinhood Holder Additions after Benchmark Gains and Declines” Garcia, J. International Journal of Financial Studies
  5. Working Paper
    SSRN “Which Number Is Sticky? Numerical Anchoring After Evidence Withdrawal in LLM Financial Analysis” Garcia, J.
  6. Working Paper
    “Are Aliases Neutral? Company Names and LLM Equity Valuation” Garcia, J.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

  1. 2026
    DOI “The Attention Economy of Retail Trading: Evidence from Robinhood and Social Media” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 51
  2. 2026
    DOI “A Stabilizing Force? How Religiosity Moderates the Effect of Sentiment on Stock Liquidity” Review of Behavioral Finance
  3. 2025
    DOI “The Power of Attention: Examining The Roles of Institutional Investor and Macroeconomic News Attention in Shaping Share Liquidity” Global Finance Journal, 67, 101160
  4. 2025
    DOI “Beyond the Headlines: Sentiment Divergence and Financial Distress” Global Finance Journal, 66, 101126
  5. 2025
    DOI “Sentiment Divergence and its Impact on Share Liquidity” Multinational Finance Journal
  6. 2024
    DOI “Herding the Crowds: Effect of Sentiment on Crowdsourced Earnings Forecasts” Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, 38(3), 331–370
  7. 2023
    DOI “Do Employees Wave Financial Red Flags Through the Glassdoor?” Journal of Forensic Accounting Research, 8(1), 160–187
  8. 2023
    DOI “Measuring Valuation Uncertainty: A PCA Approach” Applied Finance Letters, 12(1)
  9. 2022
    DOI “Analysts’ Stock Ratings and the Predictive Value of News and Twitter Sentiment” Investment Analysts Journal, 51(4), 236–252
  10. 2022
    DOI “An Evaluation of Bankruptcy Prediction Algorithms Using Synthetic Samples” Machine Learning with Applications, 9, 100343
  11. 2021
    DOI “Analyst Herding and Firm-Level Investor Sentiment” Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, 35(4), 461–494
  12. 2021
    DOI “Measuring the Effect of Investor Sentiment on Financial Distress” Managerial Finance, 47(12), 1834–1852
  13. 2021
    DOI “Measuring the Effect of Investor Sentiment on Liquidity” Managerial Finance, 47(1), 59–85

Conference Presentations

33 presentations at regional, national, and international finance and analytics conferences since 2019. Click a year to expand.

2026 5 presentations
  • “Algorithmic Anchoring: How Prompt-Embedded Reference Points Bias LLM Financial Estimates.” Research Symposium on Finance and Economics (RSFE), Krea University, Sri City, India (Virtual).
  • “Too Smart to be Human: Can AI Agents Replace Us in Behavioral Experiments?” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting, Dallas, TX.
  • “Decoding Social Media: How Attention and Sentiment Drive Retail Trading Behavior.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting, Dallas, TX.
  • “AI in the Classroom.” Southwestern Finance Association, Dallas, TX. Workshop · Session Lead
  • “Too Smart to be Human: Can AI Agents Replace Us in Behavioral Experiments?” National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS Regional AI Workshop, Los Angeles, CA.
2025 7 presentations
  • “The Attention Economy of Retail Trading: Evidence from Robinhood and Social Media.” Annual Meeting of the Financial Management Association (FMA), Vancouver, Canada.
  • “Decoding Social Media: How Attention and Sentiment Drive Retail Trading Behavior.” Research Symposium on Finance and Economics (RSFE), Krea University, Sri City, India (Virtual).
  • “Market Buzz: The Impact of Social Media Sentiment and Attention On Robinhood Traders.” Western Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI.
  • “The Impact of Investor Sentiment on Share Liquidity: Examining the Roles of Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Western Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI. with R. Lu-Andrews · Presented by Lu-Andrews
  • “Attention Matters: The Impact of Institutional Investor and Macroeconomic News Attention On Liquidity.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX.
  • “Market Buzz: The Impact of Social Media Sentiment and Attention On Robinhood Traders.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX.
  • “The Impact of Investor Sentiment on Share Liquidity: Examining the Roles of Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX. with R. Lu-Andrews · Presented by Lu-Andrews
2024 5 presentations
  • “The Power of Attention: Examining The Roles of Institutional Investor and Macroeconomic News Attention In Shaping Share Liquidity.” Annual Meeting of the Financial Management Association (FMA), Dallas, TX.
  • “The Power of Attention: Examining The Roles of Institutional Investor and Macroeconomic News Attention In Shaping Share Liquidity.” Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics, Los Angeles, CA.
  • “The Power of Attention: Examining The Roles of Institutional Investor and Macroeconomic News Attention In Shaping Share Liquidity.” Tenure Project Conference, Marshall School of Business, Los Angeles, CA.
  • “Catalyzing Financial Distress — The Impact of Divergent Sentiment and Excessive Attention?” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV.
  • “The Impact of Investor Sentiment on Share Liquidity: Examining the Roles of Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV.
2023 6 presentations
  • “Divergent Investor Sentiment and Excessive Attention: A Catalyst for Financial Distress.” Financial Management Association (FMA) Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
  • “Financial Distress — Unraveling the Impact of Divergent Investor Sentiment and Excess Attention.” Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics, Woodland Hills, CA.
  • “Liquidity in Flux: The Role of Sentiment Disagreement in Share Liquidity.” Research Symposium on Finance & Economics Conference, Sri City, India (Virtual).
  • “Sentiment Divergence and its Impact on Share Liquidity.” Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference, Melbourne, Australia (Virtual).
  • “Herding the Crowds: How Sentiment Affects Amateur Analysts’ Earnings Estimates.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Conference, Houston, TX.
  • “Measuring Valuation Uncertainty: A PCA Approach.” Southwest Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference, Houston, TX.
2022 3 presentations
  • “Do Employees Waive Financial Red Flags Through the Glassdoor?” Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting, Key West, FL.
  • “Herding the Crowds.” Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference, Virtual.
  • “Bankruptcy Prediction Using Synthetic Sampling.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.
2021 2 presentations
  • “Analyst Stock Ratings and the Predictive Value of News and Twitter Sentiment.” Financial Management Association (FMA) Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
  • “Analyst Rating Changes and the Predictive Value of News and Twitter Sentiment.” Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting, Virtual.
2020 4 presentations
  • “Analyst Herding and Firm-Level Investor Sentiment.” Decision Sciences Institute, Virtual.
  • “An Evaluation of Bankruptcy Prediction Algorithms Using Synthetic Samples.” Decision Sciences Institute, Virtual. DSI Regional Best Paper Finalist
  • “Measuring the Effect of Investor Sentiment on Financial Distress.” INFORMS Annual Meeting, Virtual.
  • “Comparative Analysis of Bankruptcy Prediction Models with Synthetic Sampling.” Southwest Decision Sciences Institute, San Antonio, TX. SW DSI Best Paper Award
2019 1 presentation
  • “Measuring the Effect of Sentiment on Liquidity.” Decision Sciences Institute, New Orleans, LA.

Professional Experience

Academic Positions

Industry Experience

Consulting

I selectively take on consulting engagements where my research and industry background can deliver measurable impact. My work sits at the intersection of advanced analytics, behavioral science, and strategic decision-making — the same space that drives my academic research and that I navigated for two decades in industry.

What I bring to engagements

My consulting is grounded in 20+ years of executive and professional experience at Ernst & Young and Toyota North America, a doctorate in finance and analytics, active peer-reviewed research in behavioral finance and AI, and hands-on fluency with the full analytics stack — from experimental design and survey methodology through machine learning, large-scale LLM engineering, and deployed simulation tools. I hold the Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) designation and am a CPA, giving me the rare ability to move fluidly between rigorous quantitative analysis and the business and financial context that makes it actionable.

Areas where I've delivered results
  • Voter & market segmentation — Clustering, persuadability modeling, and message-response experimentation using advanced statistical methods (K-medoids, PCA, gradient-boosted trees) and LLM-based voter simulation agents calibrated against real survey data
  • Behavioral analytics — Applying sentiment analysis, attention modeling, anchoring research, and experimental economics to real-world decision problems in both financial markets and public policy
  • AI strategy, integration & literacy — Helping organizations understand where generative AI creates genuine value, designing responsible AI workflows, and building internal capability through training and tool development
  • Data science for financial services — Pricing, risk modeling, forecasting, portfolio analytics, and financial distress prediction, informed by both academic research and years of hands-on corporate finance leadership
  • LLM experimentation & agent design — Designing and running large-scale LLM experiments, building theory-grounded AI agent architectures, and deploying production-ready simulation tools for ongoing client use
How I work

I engage on a project basis with clearly scoped deliverables, transparent pricing, and a bias toward work that generates lasting strategic assets, not just reports that sit on a shelf. I'm equally comfortable as the sole analyst on a focused research study or as a senior advisor embedded within a larger team. Recent engagements have included statewide voter segmentation and message-response modeling for political strategy, AI-in-education advisory for university programs, and experimental design for behavioral finance research.

I bring an academic's rigor and a practitioner's pragmatism. If you have a problem that lives at the intersection of data, behavior, and strategy, I'd welcome a conversation.

Email Me

Professional Development

Conferences, workshops, and faculty development I have attended since 2019. Click a year to expand.

2026 3 activities
  • Research Symposium on Finance and Economics (RSFE) Krea University, Sri City, India (Virtual). June 17–19, 2026.
  • Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting Dallas, TX. March 25–27, 2026.
  • National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS Regional AI Workshop Los Angeles, CA. January 22, 2026.
2025 5 activities
  • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting Vancouver, Canada. October 22–25, 2025.
  • Faculty-Led Travel Seminar Workshop Series California Lutheran University. 2024–2025. Professional Development
  • Research Symposium on Finance and Economics (RSFE) Krea University, Sri City, India (Virtual). June 11–13, 2025.
  • Western Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting Honolulu, HI. April 8–11, 2025.
  • Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting San Antonio, TX. February 12–15, 2025.
2024 5 activities
  • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting Dallas, TX. October 16–19, 2024.
  • Financial Management Association Diversity Emerging Scholars Initiative Financial Management Association, Dallas, TX. October 15, 2024. Workshop
  • Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics Los Angeles, CA. September 18–20, 2024.
  • Tenure Project Conference Marshall School of Business, Los Angeles, CA. July 21–24, 2024.
  • Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting Las Vegas, NV. February 28–March 2, 2024.
2023 8 activities
  • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting Chicago, IL. October 11–14, 2023.
  • Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics Annual Meeting Woodland Hills, CA. September 21–22, 2023.
  • Tenure Project Conference Wharton School of Business, Philadelphia, PA. July 24–26, 2023.
  • Research Symposium on Finance & Economics Conference Sri City, India (Virtual). June 14–16, 2023.
  • Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference Melbourne, Australia (Virtual). April 11–13, 2023.
  • Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting Houston, TX. March 8–11, 2023.
  • Southwest DSI Annual Meeting Houston, TX. March 8–11, 2023.
  • Project CHESS — Collaborative for Hispanics in Higher Education & Student Success, Faculty Learning Circle California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA. January 4, 2023. Professional Development
2022 7 activities
  • Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting Key West, FL. November 16–19, 2022.
  • Tenure Project Conference Seattle, WA. August 1–4, 2022.
  • Project CHESS — Collaborative for Hispanics in Higher Education & Student Success, Faculty Learning Circle California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA. June 1–3, 2022. Professional Development
  • Hong Kong Conference for FinTech, AI, and Big Data in Business Virtual. May 27–28, 2022.
  • CLU Junior Faculty Retreat California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA. May 18–20, 2022. Professional Development
  • Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference Virtual. April 20–22, 2022.
  • Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting New Orleans, LA. March 2–5, 2022. Session Chair
2021 8 activities
  • CLU Faculty Development Lunch Series California Lutheran University. October–November 2021. Professional Development
  • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting Denver, CO. October 19–23, 2021.
  • Financial Management Association Diversity Emerging Scholars Initiative Financial Management Association, Denver, CO. October 18–19, 2021. Workshop
  • Northeast Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting Online. March 26–27, 2021.
  • Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting Online. March 18–19, 2021.
  • Human Rights and Data Science Conference Southern Methodist University Data Science Institute, Online. February 25–26, 2021.
  • RStudio Global 2021 RStudio, Online. January 21, 2021.
  • American Finance Association Annual Meeting Online. January 3–5, 2021.
2020 8 activities
  • Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting Online. November 21–23, 2020.
  • Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting Online. November 19–20, 2020.
  • INFORMS Annual Meeting November 7–13, 2020.
  • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting Online. October 19–23, 2020.
  • Why R? 2020 Conference Why R Foundation, Online. September 24–27, 2020.
  • Americas Conference on Information Systems Online. August 10–14, 2020.
  • Southwest DSI Annual Meeting San Antonio, TX. March 11–14, 2020.
  • Team-Based Learning (TBL) University of North Texas, Denton, TX. February 7, 2020. Training
2019 2 activities
  • Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting New Orleans, LA. November 23–25, 2019.
  • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting New Orleans, LA. October 23–26, 2019.

Technical Skills

Statistical & ML
Data & Visualization
LLM & AI

Fluent in Spanish

Awards & Service

Recognition

University & Professional Service