7 Investing Lessons from Behavioral Psychology
PsyFi Search Monday, 22 February 2016 7 Investing Lessons from Behavioral Psychology Click … bait You could start by not wasting your time clicking on stupid clickbait articles, I suppose. But since you’re here you might as well learn something. Investing should be mainly about hard work, slogging through accounts and trying to figure out […]
I Don’t Know What I Like (And I Don’t Know What It’s Worth, Either)
PsyFi Search Tuesday, 3 March 2015 I Don’t Know What I Like (And I Don’t Know What It’s Worth, Either) Axiomatic One of the fundamental axioms of economics is that we know what we like: we have preferences, they’re consistent across time and they can be revealed by careful experimentation. This, of course, is utter […]
The Cherry Coke Effect?
PsyFi Search Monday, 13 May 2013 The Cherry Coke Effect? Hunger Games If you want a favorable decision from a judge pray that you get a hearing early in the day or straight after lunch. In similar fashion you shouldn’t be making investment decisions on an empty stomach. In the parlance, such arbiters of justice […]
Your Self-Inflicted 6% Trading Tax
PsyFi Search Thursday, 26 April 2012 Your Self-Inflicted 6% Trading Tax How Not To Make Money Making a turn from the markets is hard, we all know that. Unfortunately we tend to make it a lot harder for ourselves than we need to, and if we don’t then the investment industry is always there to […]
Triumph of the Pessimists
PsyFi Search Thursday, 18 August 2011 Triumph of the Pessimists Bad Stuff Happens Given that markets are pursuing their favourite pastime of bouncing up and down like a manic depressive doing the Hokie Cokie on a Space Hopper, investors might be forgiven for wondering what they should do next. Fortunately the world is full of […]
Profit From Self Knowledge
PsyFi Search Wednesday, 25 May 2011 Profit From Self Knowledge Gnôthi seauton! and is this the primeAnd heaven-sprung adage of the olden time!Say, canst thou make thyself? Learn first that trade;Haply thou mayst know what thyself had made. (Samuel Coleridge – Self Knowledge) Behavioral MoneymakingIt’s easy to talk about the fundamental errors people make in […]
Financial Memory Syndrome
PsyFi Search Wednesday, 26 January 2011 Financial Memory Syndrome False Memory SyndromeThere continues to be serious debate over the concept of false memory syndrome, where allegedly innocent people have been accused of serious crimes on the basis of memories which may have little basis in reality. Whatever really lies behind these cases it seems that […]
Putting Down the Credit Cards
PsyFi Search Wednesday, 3 March 2010 Putting Down the Credit Cards Deviant CardsCredit cards are one of the modern era’s great financial innovations, and have benefited the financial institutions that issue them terrifically. Unfortunately many of the people who use them get rather less rewards, mainly because of the unconscious biases that compel their every […]
Anchoring, The Mother of Behavioral Biases
PsyFi Search Thursday 12 November 2009 Anchoring, The Mother of Behavioral Biases Behavioural Biases (5): Anchoring Just as an anchored ship rarely strays too far away from its tethering point a human being prefers to stick close to the references with which they feel most comfortable. Anchoring is an easy-to-demonstrate, hard-to-eradicate behavioural bias that has […]