Tag Archives: behavioural finance

Timeless Financial Tips #4: How to Manage your Financial Behavioural Biases

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By Steve Lowrie, CFA

Special to Financial Independence Hub

There are countless external forces influencing your investment outcomes: taxes, market mood swings, breaking news, etc., etc.

Today, let’s look inward, to an equally important influence: your own financial behavioural biases.

The Dark Side of Financial Behavioural Bias

Having evolved over millennia to secure our survival, our deep-seated behavioural biases precondition us to frequently depend more on “gut feel” than rational reflection. Sometimes, our instincts are life-saving, like when a car brakes hard right in front of you. Chemical reactions in the lower brain’s amygdala trigger you to brake too, even as your higher brain is still enjoying the scenery.

Unfortunately, these same rapid-fire triggers often hurt us as investors. When we make snap financial decisions that “feel” right but are rationally wrong, we tend to sabotage our own best interests. By recognizing these reactions as they occur, you’re more likely to stop them from ruining your financial resolve, which in turn improves your odds for better outcomes. Let’s explore some behavioural finance examples that you’ll want to prepare for…

Behavioural Finance Example #1: Fear and FOMO

The point of investing is to buy low and sell high. So, why do so many investors so often do the opposite? You can blame fear, as well as Fear of Missing Out (FOMO investing). Time after time, crisis after crisis, bubble after bubble, investors rush to buy high by chasing hot holdings. They hurry to sell low, fleeing falling prices. They’re letting their behavioural biases overcome their rational resolve.

Behavioural Finance Example #2: Choice Overload and Decision Fatigue

Our brains also don’t deal well with too much information. When we experience information overload, we may stop even trying to be thoughtful, and surrender to our biases. We’ll end up favouring whatever’s most familiar, most recently outperforming, or least scary right now. When choosing from an oversized restaurant menu, that’s okay. But your life savings deserve better than that.

Behavioural Finance Example #3: Popular Demand and Survival of the Fittest

Inherently tribal by nature, we humans are susceptible to herd mentality. When everyone else gets excited and starts chasing fads, whether it is cryptocurrencies, alternative investments, or the other financial exotica-du-jour, we want to pile in too. When the herd turns tail, we want to rush after them. It’s like that old joke about escaping a bear: you don’t need to run faster than the bear; you just need to run faster than the guy next to you. In bear markets, this causes investors to flee otherwise sound positions, selling low, and paying dearly for “safer” holdings, rather than holding their well-planned ground.

Behavioural Finance Example #4: Anchor Points and Other Financial Regrets

Successful investors look past their occasional setbacks and remain focused on capturing the market’s long-term expected returns. But that’s hard to do, as we are often trapped by financial decisions regret. For example, loss aversion causes the average investor to regret losing money approximately twice as much as they appreciate gaining it. Similarly, anchor bias causes us to cling to depreciated holdings long after they no longer make sense in our portfolio, hoping against hope they’ll eventually recover to some arbitrary, past price. Ironically, you’re less likely to achieve your personal financial goals if you’re driven more by your financial regrets than your willpower.

Taking Charge of Your Financial Behavioural Biases

We’ve now looked at some of the damage done by behavioural biases. Once you know they’re there, you can at least minimize your exposure to them. Better yet, by using what behavioral psychologists call “nudges,” you can even harness your biases as forces for financial good. Following are two examples. Continue Reading…

Behavioural Finance focus: Cost Savings tips to attain Financial Freedom

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Photo: Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash with modifications by LowrieFinancial.com

By Steve Lowrie, CFA

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

As a personal financial advisor, I am often asked about “the secret” to attaining financial freedom. Not to go all metaphysical on you, but to improve your long-term outcomes, try looking inward. After all, you are among the few drivers you have much control over. One great way to sharpen your financial acumen is by combining behavioural finance with an evidence-based perspective. Together, these disciplines offer reams of insights on how tending to your own best practices is often the best-kept secret to enjoying wealth management success.

Finding your Behavioural Finance focus

Here’s how The Behavioral Investor author Daniel Crosby describes behavioural finance:

“Emotional centers of the brain that helped guide primitive behavior like avoiding attack are now shown by brain scans to be involved in processing information about financial risks. These brain areas are found in mammals the world over and are blunt instruments designed for quick reaction, not precise thinking. Rapid, decisive action may save a squirrel from an owl, but it certainly doesn’t help investors. In fact, a large body of research suggests that investors profit most when they do the least.”

As early as the 1970s, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman was a driving force behind the formation of behavioural finance (along with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and the late Amos Tversky). In his landmark book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Kahneman describes this same quick vs. precise thinking as System 1 vs. System 2 thinking:

“System 1 [thinking] operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 [thinking] allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.”

Long before the term “behavioural finance” was a thing, wise academics and practitioners alike were suggesting investors are best off avoiding their fast-thinking instincts in favor of slower-thinking resolve. As billionaire Warren Buffett said decades ago:

“Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. … Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.”

Buffett is correct. And yet, from what I see every day, fast, reactionary thinking continues to dominate most investors’ actions. What else could explain the never-ending parade of people chasing after FOMO (fear of missing out) investment trends instead of following the simple investing strategies, an evidence-based mindset prescribes?

Your brain’s take on Wealth Management

What’s actually going on in our heads when we allow our instincts and emotions to overcome our higher reasoning? Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig’s “Your Money & Your Brain” takes us on a fascinating tour inside the mechanics in our own heads.

For example, Zweig warns us:

“…the amygdala [in your brain] can flood your body with fear signals before you are consciously aware of being afraid … [and] the nucleus accumbens in your reflexive brain becomes intensely aroused when you anticipate a financial gain.”

In this related piece, “It’s the Little Things That Can Color an Investor’s Outlook,” Zweig describes how even seeing the same financial numbers in red vs. a neutral color can unwittingly change our feelings about the data. Additional “insidious influences” include whether we’re hungry or full, sleepy or awake, or experiencing a cloudy or sunny day.

These sorts of overcharged emotions and unconscious biases can steer you wrong when you’re deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold your investments. They can also knock you off course from your holistic financial planning.

Nudging your way to Cost Savings

By adding academic rigor to our thinking, behavioural finance improves our ability to identify and manage our behavioural weaknesses. We can then apply that knowledge toward not reacting to the quick tricks our brain plays on us. Better still, we can learn how to play tricks right back on our brain: turning otherwise adverse instincts to our advantage. Continue Reading…

Behavioural Finance: We have met the Enemy and it is Us

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By Noah Solomon

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Behavioural finance is the study of the influence of psychology on the behaviour of investors. Its central theme is that investors are not always rational, have limits to their self-control, and are influenced by cognitive biases. People harbour a multitude of self-defeating behaviours that lead to self-defeating results.

In The Laws of Wealth: Psychology and the Secret to Investing Success, author Daniel Crosby states: “The fact that people are fallible is your biggest enduring advantage in the accumulation of greater wealth. The fact that you are just as fallible is the biggest impediment to that very same goal.”

Confirmation Bias: Letting the Tail wag the Dog

Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to pay close attention to information that confirms their beliefs and ignore information that contradicts it.

Most of us have a really bad habit of only paying attention to information that agrees with our existing beliefs. Our natural tendency is to listen to people who agree with us because it feels good to hear our opinions reflected to us. We also tend to let the proverbial tail wag the dog: to draw conclusions before objectively weighing the facts. We first construct hypotheses, and then subsequently look for information that supports them.

Even some of the greatest investors have fallen prey to the confirmation bias trap. In December 2012, Bill Ackman, Chief Investment Officer of Pershing Square, launched a crusade against Herbalife, a nutritional supplements company, referring to the company as a pyramid scheme and stating that its stock was worthless. After taking a $1 billion short position in Herbalife, he continued to seek supporting evidence for his original hypothesis from Herbalife customers who had poor experiences with the company.

Activist investor Carl Icahn, who had an opposing view, acquired a 26% ownership stake in the company. The epic battle that ensued between two of Wall Street’s biggest titans resulted in a major loss for Ackman. Had Ackman attempted to find potential flaws in his thesis by seeking out customers who had positive Herbalife experiences, he might have either avoided or mitigated the losses which his fund suffered.

Loss Aversion/Disposition Effect: The Pain of Losses is (Myopically) larger than the Pleasure of Gains

Loss aversion does not describe the tendency of people to try and avoid losses, which is completely rational. Rather, it refers to having an economically unbalanced desire to avoid losses at the expense of foregoing commensurate or greater gains, which can cause them to win battles yet lose wars.

Loss aversion can cause investors to refrain from selling losing positions in the hope of making their money back, thereby allowing run of the mill losses to metastasise into “there goes my house” losses.  Loss aversion can also lead to significant opportunity costs, as money gets “trapped” in underperforming investments at the expense of foregoing better opportunities.

Closely related to loss aversion is the disposition effect, which refers to a cognitive bias that causes investors to sell winning positions prematurely and irrationally stick with losing positions. When a position is rising, we get anxious to lock in our gains and sell prematurely. At the same time, people are often too slow to cut their losses on holdings which are losing money and hold on to them in the hopes that they will recover. These behaviours tend to diminish gains and exaggerate losses, thereby leading to poor overall performance.

Fear of Missing Out: There’s nothing more annoying than watching your neighbour get rich

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) refers to feelings of anxiety or insecurity over the possibility of missing out on an event or opportunity. What is most interesting is that FOMO is an emotional reaction that pushes us to trade or invest in a less disciplined way. Rather than buy stocks when they offer the most attractive risk-to-return ratio, investors are driven to buy them to an even greater degree the less attractive they look technically. Our fear of missing out becomes greater the more the market continues to act in an irrational way.

FOMO is frustrating because it occurs when the market is doing the unexpected and we are sticking to a solid plan. From 1996 to 2000, the NASDAQ stock index exploded from 1,058 to 4,131 points. Many of these technology stocks had little or no earnings yet still commanded steep prices. Investors feared that if they didn’t get in now they would miss out. Millionaires were minted overnight until it all went wrong. The dotcom bubble burst, and trillions of dollars of investor wealth vanished as the NASDAQ plunged to under 2,000 points by the end of 2001. Few did their due diligence on these hot tech stocks to make sure they were the best long-term investments for their personal portfolio and goals. It took many years for the average investor to recover.

In his characteristically folksy yet caustic manner, Warren Buffett used the following analogy to illustrate the absurdity of FOMO:

“Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behaviour akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”

The Bandwagon Effect: Making sheep look like independent thinkers

The bandwagon effect describes the tendency of investors to gain comfort doing something simply because many other people are doing it. The tendency of people to prefer doing ill-advised things that others are doing rather than act rationally in isolation is best summarized by John Maynard Keynes:

“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”

Whereas using the performance of others as a reference point for measuring your results mitigates the risk of underperforming your peers, it can expose you to severe losses. The widespread abandonment of reason and rationality associated with a herd mentality has historically resulted in speculative bubbles in which the crowd joins hands and runs off the cliff together. Continue Reading…

Why a rising Loonie can be costly for investors

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graham-bodel
Graham Bodel

By Graham Bodel, Chalten Advisors

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

There are many pitfalls that can trip up Canadian investors as they try to save and invest sensibly for the long run.  High and/or hidden fees, poor diversification, inappropriate investments for a given risk tolerance, under-utilization of tax efficient accounts are a few we see regular,  but the one that might just have the largest negative impact is behavioural.

You see, when it comes to investing unfortunately people are psychologically hardwired to do the opposite of what’s good for them.  In an October 2008 op-ed piece in the New York Times Warren Buffett advised investors to:

“be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

Words of wisdom but easier said than done, especially in the grips of the financial crisis.

Investors hurt by emotions

But it doesn’t take a financial crisis to spur fits of fear and greed — in fact, investors are prone to these emotions a lot of the time and it hurts them.  The data shows that individual investors who often use mutual funds as their investment vehicle of choice, perform much worse than the funds in which they invest.

This is because they invest more of their money during times of euphoria when markets are at their peak or when certain funds are performing well and they sell more of their investments during market bottoms at times of panic or when certain funds are performing poorly. (You’re supposed to buy low and sell high, not the opposite).  Investors get caught in a performance chasing struggle driven by fear of either missing out or losing their shirt.

One of the biggest drivers of this psychological roller coaster for Canadians in the last couple of years has been the Canadian dollar.  The following chart from Bloomberg Markets shows the USD/CAD over the last year:

CAD rollercoasterThe loonie hits its weakest point in mid-January which was actually the end of a long decline from the last point where the CAD was at par with the USD back in January of 2013.  Canadian investors tend to be too overweight Canadian stocks and bonds and this hurt through mid-January.  Having exposure to investments denominated in currencies other than Canadian dollars provided a return booster during that period.  Unfortunately this is where the poor behaviour kicks into high gear.  In December of 2015 investors piled out of Canadian equity and bond funds an into US and global funds.  According the Financial Post in January at the very trough of the loonie:

 “of the five best selling fund types in December, four were global or US focused.   Of the five worst, four were Canadian, reflecting the continued flight from our slumping equity markets and devaluing loonie.”

Timing couldn’t be worse

The timing couldn’t have been worse!  The turnaround since then has been steep, at least until the beginning of May this year when the trend seemed to reverse again.  You can understand how investors and their advisors can become really frustrated.  Performance chasing can be a killer in these circumstances.  Rob Carrick chronicled this really well in his Sunday Globe & Mail article “How the rising loonie is costing Canadian investors” capturing the sentiment as follows:

“They made a lot of money when the dollar was falling, but this year’s reversal has cost them. They’re annoyed about this turn of events and wondering who to blame. God help us when the housing market falls. People are going to self-combust.”

The reality unfortunately for many investors is that they didn’t make a lot of money when the dollar was falling because they waited to invest in foreign markets when the dollar had already fallen and are now being punished for chasing performance.

The evidence shows clearly that trying to time the market is extremely difficult and that is especially true of currency markets.  Carrick suggests some investors may want to hedge foreign currency exposure to mute this type of volatility.  Whether you hedge or keep currency as a source of risk and return in your portfolio, the most important thing is to just set a target allocation to domestic and foreign stocks and bonds that suits your risk profile and trade only when things drift out of balance.  That will force you to buy low and sell high and that is good investing behaviour.

Graham Bodel is the founder and director of a new fee-only financial planning and portfolio management firm based in Vancouver, BC., Chalten Fee-Only Advisors Ltd. This blog is republished with permission: the original can be found on Bodel’s blog here.

 

Why it’s hard to do nothing in the stock market

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AmanRaina
Aman Raina

By Aman Raina, Sage Investors

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

In every pullback in the stock market, every one of us faces an epic battle with our emotions.  Our emotions are often telling us to do something … anything to minimize the damage that is occurring to our stock portfolios.

Here’s the thing. It’s perfectly normal. As humans, we’re wired for it.

Whenever we encounter periods of stress and adversity, we are wired to search, process, and identify solutions to remedy the problem immediately.  Sitting on are hands and doing nothing doesn’t seem to make it to the top of our list.

Here’s an example that I recently faced. One night my family was at my sister-in-law’s place hanging out. Later in the evening my wife and I received what looked like a long distance call so we both thought it was spam because we didn’t know anyone from where the area code came from.

We moved along.  About a half-hour later I was checking my phone and I saw a number flash up from our home alarm service. Uh-oh. I thought something happened. Ironically I was just at the house to get some PJ’s for the kids and I came back to my sister-in-law’s house when I saw the message. I thought, “did I leave the door unlocked? Did the door blow open and someone ran in ?”

The need to do something … a real-life example

I had a variety of emotions go through me and all of them were involving panic. I told my wife, who then proceeded to ask me if I left the door open or if I activated the alarm. All these questions meant nothing to me at that moment because potentially someone could be in my house trashing it. I was asking my wife what should we do because clearly I didn’t have my wits with me.

We needed to do something. So we called the alarm company and indeed the alarm went off and police were being dispatched. I bolted back in the car and drove like a crazy guy back to the house. I got there. Nothing. The door was closed and locked. I opened the door and inside I could see these balloons from my son’s birthday party float around the house. It must have tripped the motion detector. We were able to cancel the dispatch to the police. All good.

What happened here? I incurred a stressful, emotional moment and instead of staying calm (like my wife), I was jumping around looking to do something because in a way I was feeling helpless and not in control of the situation. This happens to us constantly in investing. When the markets or a specific stock or ETF falls, we feel we have to do something. Sell some of it. Sell it all. We need something to go down to help us regain our security.

Investment coaches can install balance

The reality is times of market stress are times to fully reinforce and execute your investment ideology and investment plan. Instead of feeling woe on the 500-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrials, we need to take control of the situation by not “trading” but instead should be reviewing our Investment Ideology to reinforce the values and criteria we need to implement to make better decisions and we need to clinically and thoughtfully execute our investment plan.  Investment coaches are great at instilling this balance and discipline. This concept of being reactive versus proactive is a nemesis to us all.

Another reality is that market pullbacks are the worst time to start running around the house with scissors in your hand. We will most likely make a panicked decision that will often put our portfolio on a worst footing in the long term.  This tension is engrained in us and it is so hard to overcome for each and every one of us, yours truly included.

So the next time the stocks in your portfolio are falling collectively and meaningfully (It will happen. Count on it), try to resist that pressure to have to do something immediately. Now I premise this with the exception that if a stock of a company is undergoing a negative Game Changer Moment, and the fundamentals of the business model have truly been impaired then you need to take action to preserve your savings.  Just do the homework and due diligence.

Aman Raina, MBA is an Investment Coach and founder of Sage Investors, an independent practice specializing in investment coaching and portfolio analysis services. This blog was originally published on his website on March 21st  and is reproduced  here with permission.