4-minute Money Ideas

Does Investor Bias Make You Underperform the Market? By Douglas Goldstein CFP® - helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel A friend recently had a losing streak at the casino. Instead of walking away, he played more hands of blackjack. “I was determined to win,” he lamented. In fact, he was playing to recoup his losses. He was a victim of investment biases subconsciously affecting his decision-making. Gambler’s Fallacy – the belief that after a streak of losses his luck would turn – duped him into doubling his losses. A recent study of Major League Baseball umpires showed how biases are at work in all forms of decision-making. In 1.5 million pitches, umpires were less likely to call a strike if the previous pitch was a strike. Investor bias can lead you to make bad investing decisions. Biases are shortcuts in decision-making; you may, for example, increase your position in gold stocks because you have recently made a lot of money in gold, ignoring economic news that suggests gold prices are li