Thanks for the advice, I will ignore you from now on since you obviously don't have a clue of what you're talking about. BTW, I have no aspirations of being an intellectual, precisely because most of them are phony hypocrites. Learn a little more about Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and behavioral finance:
Behavioral Finance, with its roots in the Psychological Study of Human Decision Making, documents how and why most investment managers:
- are more confident than they should be in their forecasting ability
- do not process information efficiently
experience the illusion of control
- do not act as if the choices they make come from a probability distribution
- make different trade-off decisions depending on the current context
- give undue credence to management and research gurus
- hang on and even add to losing positions
These psychological biases give rise to excessive trading and retention of losing positions well after the evidence indicates that the basis for the original investment has changed. The empirical results of this study show that most managers underperform their benchmarks, and intuitively most investors are aware of the facts, although the urge to deny overpowers these rational conclusions. Underperformance is typically explained away with the use of alternative time horizons, or by ascribing irrationality to recent investors (ie, the market is wrong), or by confidently asserting that things are just about to turn favourable.
Several useful suggestions have been advanced to help investors deal with these behavioural impediments to investment success. These are:.
- Accept that investing is a probabilistic art.
- Recognize and avoid the circumstances leading to undue confidence.
- Deliberately seek out the contrary view.
- Have a written plan for each position, especially the "exit strategies".
- Create feedback loops that allow for process analysis and improvement.
REFERENCES:
Kahneman, Daniel, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, London: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Poundstone, William. Prisoner's Dilemma. New York: Anchor Books (Doubleday), 1992.
Cialdini, Robert B. Influence (The Psychology of Persuasion). New York: Quill, William Morrow, 1984.
Thaler, Richard H., ed. Advances in Behavioral Finance. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1982.
Hogarth, Robin M. and Melvin W. Reder, eds. Rational Choice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Dreman, David. Contrarian Investment Strategy. New York: Random House, 1979.
Thaler, Richard H. The Winner's Curse, New York: The Free Press, 1992.
Paulos, John Allen. Innumeracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1988.
Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Pratt, John W. and Richard J. Zeckhauser, eds. Principals and Agents: The Structure o Business. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1985.
Articles/Papers
Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky. "Choices, Values, and Frames."' America Psychologist, Vol. 39, No. 4, April 1984: 341-50.
De Bondt, Werner F.M. and Richard H. Thaler. "Financial Decision-Making in Markets and Firms: A Behavioral Perspective." National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. Working Paper No. 4777.
Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice." AAAS, 1981