Basics Beginner: Psychology and Investing

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1.
In investing, overconfidence means thinking that we are more capable than we really are.
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True. Overconfidence is an unhealthy extension of confidence.
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.
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.
4.
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.
5.
In investing, sunk costs refer to costs that have already been incurred.
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True. If the costs of an investment are high, we might become reluctant to dump it due to how much we have put into it.
6.
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.
7.
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.
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.
Which of the following examples illustrates selective memory?
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Remembering only the successes. Selective memory, as a rule, selects those memories that we want to preserve.
10.
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.