Basics Beginner: Psychology and Investing

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1.
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.
2.
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.
3.
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.
4.
Mental accounting refers to _______.
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Keeping our money in different buckets for different purposes. While this practice is often beneficial, it can sometimes lead to wasteful spending depending on how we view those buckets.
5.
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.
6.
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.
7.
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.
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.
What is a good way as an investor to avoid falling prey to the framing effect?
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Consider the total return of your investments. Seeing your choice in terms of the total return can help you avoid framing it in relative terms, which can be costly.
10.
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.