The Problem With Positive Thinking

Over on the consistently excellent Abnormal Returns, Tadas Viskanta has posted an excerpt from my new book, Investing Psychology: The Effects of Behavioral Finance on Investment Choice and Bias (Wiley Finance):

Okay, so we now know that while we can trust our senses to help us determine the future trajectory of a ball we can’t trust them to help us predict the future trajectory of stocks. But we can deal with that, because we’re smart, right?

In fact, we know we’re smarter than the average investor, so we can be pretty sure that we will make money on the markets. After all, if we didn’t think we were going to make money on the markets we wouldn’t be investing, would we?

Read More >> The Problem With Positive Thinking (external link)

A Load of Bull

Sporadic Bull 

In a recent (very nice) review the writer described me as a “sporadic blogger” which is, I suppose, nothing more than a statement of fact.  It’s nicely circular, though, as the one of the reasons for the infrequent posting was the subject of the review … 

The book, Investing Psychology: The Effects of Behavioral Finance on Investment Choice and Bias (Wiley Finance), is a review of the current state of behavioral finance for the non-expert – a task born out of hope as much as expectation, I should add, as the subject moves almost as fast as you can research it – and a plea for investors to take care, to avoid the less-than-well-signposted traps.  Finance is a world dominated by people whose relationship with the truth isn't so much tenuous as trivialized.  And a bull market attracts bull merchants like no other.

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