Basics Beginner: Psychology and Investing

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1.
If you are holding two beliefs that are seemingly at odds with each other and you are uncomfortable doing so, then you are suffering from _______.
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Cognitive dissonance. Because of the discomfort, you will need a way to resolve the dissonance.
2.
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.
3.
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.
4.
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.
5.
An example of sunk costs is _______.
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Holding on to a stock for too long because you have put a lot of money into it. When we have "sunk" money into something, we may be reluctant to let go of it when it turns into a loser.
6.
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.
7.
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.
8.
Confirmation bias is the practice of _______.
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Giving preference to information that supports what we already believe. This practice can sometimes limit our success with investing by shutting out other opportunities.
9.
In investing, self-handicapping might be considered the opposite of _______.
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Overconfidence. Self-handicapping involves looking for excuses beforehand to explain why something might not work. If it indeed does not work, we have handicapped ourselves.
10.
A way to describe the psychological concept of loss aversion is this: strongly preferring to avoid losses over acquiring gains.
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True. This behavior can in some cases cause you to lose money.