Your Brain Is Killing Your Returns

Every year Dalbar releases their annual “Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior”study which continues to show just how poorly investors perform relative to market benchmarks over time. More importantly, they discuss many of the reasons for that underperformance which are all directly attributable to your brain. 

George Dvorsky once wrote that:

“The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn’t mean our brains don’t have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we’re subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions.“

Cognitive biases are an anathema to portfolio management as it impairs our ability to remain emotionally disconnected from our money.  As history all too clearly shows, investors always do the “opposite” of what they should when it comes to investing their own money. They “buy high” as the emotion of “greed” overtakes logic and “sell low” as “fear” impairs the decision-making process.

Here are 5 of the most insidious biases that will keep you from achieving your long-term investment goals.

1) Confirmation Bias

As individuals, we tend to seek out information that conforms to our current beliefs. If one believes that the stock market is going to rise, they tend to only seek out news and information that supports that position. This confirmation bias is a primary driver of the psychological investing cycle of individuals as shown below.

The issue of “confirmation bias” also creates a problem for the media. Since the media requires “paid advertisers” to create revenue, viewer or readership is paramount to obtaining those clients.  As financial markets are rising, presenting non-confirming views of the financial markets lowers views and reads as investors seek sources to “confirm”their current beliefs. Individuals want “affirmation” that their current thought process is correct.  As human beings, we hate being told that we are wrong, so we tend to seek out sources that tell us we are “right.”

2) Gambler’s Fallacy

The “Gambler’s Fallacy” is one of the biggest issues faced by individuals when investing. As emotionally driven human beings, we tend to put a tremendous amount of weight on previous events believing that future outcomes will somehow be the same.