Observations on
Psychology and the Markets
I wrote an article back in November highlighting the way that ETFs are often launched once an investment thesis has become way oversubscribed. We looked at the recent example of the ProShares Decline of the Retail Store ETF, ticker EMTY (no kidding). Can you guess what happened next?
A respected former colleague of mine absolutely loved to play devil's advocate. Whatever investment thesis was posed, he would always take the other side of the argument. Over time, I began to understand and respect this approach. Sometimes his challenge would expose behavioral biases such as confirmation bias or the endowment effect, leading us to reconsider our outlook and positioning.
I was a guest speaker again this week on MarketWatchers LIVE over at StockCharts.com. Always a pleasure to speak with Tom Bowley and Erin Swenlin who demonstrate straightforward and powerful methods to understand the markets through charts.
I've been chipping away at articles I've stored in my Pocket and just made it through a series of pieces on the "Sell in May" phenomenon. If you're not familiar, the proclamation "Sell in May and Go Away" speaks to the perceived seasonal trend where the US stock market tends to be weaker in the summer to fall period than the winter to spring period.
It is with a heavy heart that we acknowledge the delisting of Long Blockchain, a stock that quickly became the poster child for Blockchain Bubblemania.
We've fallen into a sort of daily routine for our Spring Break in Sicily. Lazy morning at home, load the car up around 10:00, go exploring. Lunch on the fly and a bonus gelato stop when we need a morale boost. With very little English spoken, every step of this journey has been an adventure. However, the most hair-rising and invigorating challenge has been driving in Sicily.
My family and I are on Spring Break this week in Sicily. We decided to go full immersion and rented a house in a small town outside of Palermo. We travelled via Munich and had a couple days there to explore before heading to Italy. As I had hoped and expected, we're learning so much about new people and places. At the same time, we're learning a great deal about ourselves as well as the universality of the human condition.
I was a guest speaker this week on MarketWatchers LIVE over at StockCharts.com. Tom Bowley and Erin Swenlin do a fantastic job breaking down the markets. Simple charts with powerful messages!
I've spoken often about behavioral biases and how to minimize their impact on your investment decisions. So if I'm so familiar with all of these biases, then I'm able to completely avoid them in my own investing, right? A recent interview with Professor Patricia Devine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows why the answer is a big "no."
