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Stocks 407: Psychology and Investing

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1.
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.
2.
The practice of herding refers to _______.
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Going along with the crowd. This is the practice of buying and selling based on the fact that it is popular to do so at the time.
3.
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.
4.
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.
5.
In the world of investing, what does overconfidence refer to?
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The ability to think that one is smarter than one really is. Overconfidence stretches normal confidence to unhealthy levels.
6.
In the psychology of investing, the "framing effect" refers to _______.
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Using a reference point to make investment decisions. Because this reference point can be subjective, it can lead to some rash decisions.
7.
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.
8.
With regard to investing behavior, mental accounting refers to following the crowd.
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False. Mental accounting refers to keeping ones money in different buckets for different purposes.
9.
What does regret often lead to?
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Making a bad sell decision because youve confused a bad outcome with a bad decision. You may feel regret after a bad outcome, such as a stretch of weak performance from a given stock, even if you chose the investment for all the right reasons and the underlying business remains strong. Regret can lead you to make a bad sell decision.
10.
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.