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Stocks 407: Psychology and Investing

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1.
What does representativeness lead to?
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Giving too much weight to recent performance. Representativeness is a mental shortcut that causes investors to give too much weight to recent evidence--such as short-term performance numbers--and too little weight to evidence from the more distant past. For instance, a look at a companys profit trends over the past six years is likely to yield more insight than looking at that companys stock performance over the past six months.
2.
Investors who exhibit "herding" behavior tend to think that other investors have more information than they do.
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True. Herding refers to investing along with the crowd. This usually entails believing that others have information that you dont.
3.
An example of the psychological concept of loss aversion is _______.
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Holding onto a poorly performing stock. The fear of loss is so great in some people that they will hold on to stocks that are tanking badly, even when they see no real reason for it.
4.
The sunk costs fallacy refers to _______.
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Being unable to ignore the sunk costs of an investment. Being unable to ignore these costs could lead to holding onto the investment well past the time to sell it.
5.
Mental accounting is a psychological practice that refers to keeping our investments in good condition.
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False. Mental accounting really means putting our money in different buckets for different purposes. Its not always harmful, but sometimes it can inadvertently lead to wasteful spending.
6.
What does overconfidence in investing often lead to?
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Rapid trading. Overconfident investors trade more rapidly because they think they know more than those on the opposite end of the trade.
7.
The framing effect can lead you to treat buying decisions in relative terms.
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True. This effect can affect the choices you make when you buy investments.
8.
What does anchoring often lead to?
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An unwillingness to part with laggard investments. Investors often cling to investments in order to wait for a point at which they will break even, even if the underlying business has fundamentally changed for the worse.
9.
Confirmation bias is a good investing practice to follow because it usually leads to good decisions.
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False. While it sometimes does, it can also deprive us of choosing other, potentially good opportunities.
10.
Self-handicapping bias occurs when we _______.
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Think of excuses before we do something to justify failure just in case it happens. These excuses can sabotage our performance.