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Stocks 407: Psychology and Investing

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1.
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.
2.
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.
3.
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.
4.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
9.
A disadvantage of "anchoring" behavior in investing is that you might hold onto an investment longer than you should, given the fundamentals of the company behind it.
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True. As an investor, you might stick with an investment in order to wait for a point at which it will be "worth it" to you, which might lead to a loss on it.
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.