Goal-Setting
Goal-setting is the master art or skill because it is the ability that enables you to gain all other skills and abilities. It is the main function of your mind. Your conscious mind sets the goal via a thought…
Stock Trading Education
The other day, an ex-colleague asked me to point him to some trading books that would teach him to get rich. I was cracking my head for some wisdom that could help him with in his journey as trader. After a while,…
Money-Can-Not-Buy-Happiness-Bias
Numerous studies have shown that money makes happy up to an inflection point of between 40,000 to 70,000 USD per year. I guess that is quite obvious since with that amount of money one’s basic needs can be met (depending on where…
Recency Bias
We tend to associate more importance to recent events than we do to less recent ones. The more vivid our memory of something which occurred in the past is, the more “available” that event will be in our mind and the more…
Scarcity Bias
No, I am not referring to that 1998 action movie with Tia Carrere. More to situations where you spend a month researching the best flat screen TV, then invested twice as much money in a penny stock based solely on a hot…
Anchoring Bias
This is clinging to a fact or figure that should have no bearing on your decision. Often, we use an initial value or first piece of informationa as a “starting point” in decision making. Even if the initial value was…
Decision Heuristics
Or why we adhere so strongly to our beliefs. One culprit is what the rule of consistency describes: a powerful force that compels us to act in a way that is consistent with our past behavior (this rule is extensively…
Credulity Bias
“The Moon is made of green cheese.” While we might like to believe that we are all perfectly rational, reality is far different. Unfortunately, we tend to be susceptible to the manipulative messages that the financial industry and the popular…
Hindsight Bias
Also known as the “I knew it all along” effect. Hindsight bias refers to our tendency to take facts now known and interpret them in a way that explains past events. In retrospect everything seems clear and inevitable. This is a…
Overconfidence
A close relative to the previously mentioned Confirmation Bias, Overconfidence is the tendency to overestimate our own abilities (i.e., we aren’t as smart as we think we are). We tend to think that we are much better forecasters and estimators than we…