Ten best financial practices to jump-start your new year
Happy New Year! Now that 2017 is a wrap, one of the best presents you can bestow on yourself and your loved ones is the gift of proper preparation for the rest of the year. Want to get a jump-start on it? Here are 10 financial best practices to energize your wealth management efforts. […]
The ABC’s of behavioral biases: 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 biases: 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 seen […]
Cryptocurrency: What’s it all about?
Have you caught cryptocurrency fever, or are you at least wondering what it’s all about? Odds are, you hadn’t even heard the term until recently. Now, it seems as if everybody and their cousin are getting in on it. Psychologists have assigned a term to the angst you might be feeling in the heat of […]
The ABC’s of behavioral biases: 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 ABC’s of behavioral biases: 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 ABC’s of behavioral biases: 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 not […]
The ABC’s of behavioral biases: an introduction
By now, you’ve probably heard the news: Your own behavioral biases are often the greatest threat to your financial well-being. As investors, we leap before we look. We stay when we should go. We cringe at the very risks that are expected to generate our greatest rewards. All the while, we rush into nearly every […]
Market commentary – October 2017
Stock Markets Equity market returns over several periods ending September 30, 2017 are shown on the graph to the right. Here are a few highlights: Stocks provided above-average returns over the past quarter – REITs lagged. Non-domestic markets led the way in recent periods; over longer periods it was domestic markets. While it would be […]
Dow 22,000 – why we’re here and what it means
On August 2, 2017, the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record, closing above 22,000 for the first time. People will debate the cause of the rally and how long it will last, but there is only one answer that matters to the prudent investor – time. Markets go up over time. Over the last […]