Entries by Cary Facer
The ABCs of Behavioral Bias – Conclusion
We’ll wrap our series, the ABCs of Behavioral Biases, by repeating our initial premise: Your own behavioral biases are often the greatest threat to your financial well-being. We hope we’ve demonstrated the many ways this single statement can play out, and how often our survival-mode brains trick us into making financial calls that foil our […]
The ABCs of Behavioral Bias – S-Z
We’re coming in for a landing on our alphabetic run-down of behavioral biases. Today, we’ll present the final line-up: sunk cost fallacy and tracking error regret. Sunk Cost Fallacy What is it? Sunk cost fallacy makes it harder for us to lose something when we also face losing the time, energy or money we’ve already […]
The ABCs of Behavioral Bias – O-R
So many financial behavioral biases, so little time! Today, let’s take a few minutes to cover our next batch of biases: overconfidence, pattern recognition and recency. Overconfidence What is it? No sooner do we recover from one debilitating bias, our brain can whipsaw us in an equal but opposite direction. For example, we’ve already […]
The ABCs of Behavioral Bias – H-O
There are so many investment-impacting behavioral biases, we could probably identify at least one for nearly every letter in the alphabet. Today, we’ll continue with the most significant ones by looking at: hindsight, loss aversion, mental accounting and outcome bias. Hindsight What is it? In “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman credits Baruch […]
The ABCs of Behavioral Bias – F-H
Let’s continue our alphabetic tour of common behavioral biases that distract otherwise rational investors from making best choices about their wealth. Today, we’ll tackle: fear, framing, greed and herd mentality. Fear What is it? You know what fear is, but it may be less obvious how it works. As Jason Zweig describes in “Your Money […]
The ABCs of Behavioral Bias – A-F
Welcome back to our “ABCs of Behavioral Biases.” Today, we’ll get started by introducing you to four self-inflicted biases that knock a number of investors off-course: anchoring, blind spot, confirmation and familiarity bias. Anchoring Bias What is it? Anchoring bias occurs when you fix on or “anchor” your decisions to a reference point, whether or […]