1/16
Was reading upon #Biases & learnt a lot. Thought of sharing a few pointers .
Simply put Bias is a disproportionate weight in favour of or against any idea/thing in all aspects of life.
Few types of Biases ( out of the many) with not so random images. :)
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2/16
The #DunningKruger effect now is fairly well known , wherein people with limited knowledge overestimate their competence, whilst the actually knowledgeable question themselves often .
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".
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3/16
*#SelfServingBias*
A very interesting bias wherein we credit our successes to purely ourselves, but when things go awry we cite luck & external forces .
Rings any bells?
Basically a defence mechanism to protect our self esteem & eventually from personal responsibility.
4/16
* #ConfirmationBias *
We all favour ideas & beliefs that affirm to our existing ones' , rarely being open to contradictory opinions .
(Especially in markets !! 😬) Why?
Laziness? Mental block? Ego ?
No wonder, Birds of a feather flock together ... 😉
5/16
* #SunkCostBias *
As we know, sunk costs are irrecoverable , regardless of outcomes. (Eg Money expended towards R&D for a molecule which doesn't work out)
But this actually extends in any investment we make - Time,Money, Effort, Relationships ...😏
Interesting right?
6/16
Be it financial decisions, daily life decisions, our career ...
we tend to go all in because we have invested our time,energy & efforts & we PERSIST with them. The psychological blocks in the way of simply discarding our "misses" & clinging onto them is baffling.
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7/16
* The #BandwagonEffect*
Commonly known as herd mentality wherein people do something primarily because they see others doing it,despite it not aligning to their beliefs . The best example of it being Markets :) #SnobEffect works contrary to this .
8/16
*#HindsightBias*
All of us are guilty of this ! When something happens as per our claims, we tend to blurt out
"I said so ! " 🤷😬
Things are often more obvious & predictable after events transpire.
But intially one can only offer a guess.
Often leads to overconfidence 🙂
9/16
* Optimistic/ Pessimistic Bias *
Basically the difference between a person's expectation & the actual outcome.
If reality is better than expected - Pessimistic Bias & vice versa.
Must say for all that positivity I exude, I actually incline toward a Pessimistic Bias! 🤓
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10/16
Hence it is rightly said, "Never make decisions when sad & promises when happy."
For we tend to become victim to our emotions which makes our thinking irrational .
So are we rationally irrational or irrationally rational ?? 🤔
11/16
*#AvailabilityBias*
When faced with a bottleneck we tend to have this bias of leaning toward information which is readily available & retreivable from our memory ,thereby distorting our understanding of real risks . For we assume our recollections to be concise & precise.
As a society we involuntarily tend to do this .
A lady driving well ?
Good looking ,hence must be dumb !
Men & nurturing?
Stereotyping & failing to look at the larger picture before jumping to conclusions based on info available.
13/16
* In Group Bias *
Don't we tend to favour our known one's more than a stranger ?
I know I have done this often .
It kind of stems sub consciously .
We think we are being impartial .
It is just our love and kinship onto play here.
If not overdone , is actually healthy.
Wherein generic statements (specifically positive) also seem specific to us because of a combination of wishful thinking & hopefulness.
Often used in horoscopes, marketing & advertising . Heck even in grooming nowadays ! 😀
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15/16
To sum it up, I guess we all have fallen prey to our biases at some point,for it is easier said than done !
But some #CriticalThinking and #ReflectiveJudgement definitely shall help us in better decision making I guess!
Afterall we all learn from our mistakes!! 🤓🤓🤷🤷
16/16
I hope this thread provided some content which might be useful for investing or life in general . .
Thanks for putting up with it ! :))
A book that must be read by all direct equity investors but will be appreciated & understood by a few, that too only after witnessing an entire cycle play out in markets.
Few of my takeaways from this 💎 by Howard Marks.
👇🏽
2/30
To consistently beat the market,
You either need a ton of luck or superior insight & awareness of psychology.
Because investing is at least as much of an art as it is a science, it is essential that one's investment approach be intuitive & adaptive always.
3/30
All investors can't beat the market, since collectively, they are the market.
Stellar returns majorly come from correct non consensus forecasts.
Here Second Level Thinking matters immensely.
And the number of people capable of it is tiny.
Weekends used to consist of watching episodes of Mahabharata , Ramayana,Mogli ,He Man and the likes.
We danced clumsily to the 90's Indi Pop songs & thought WWF was real.
We created so many memories with hardly any photos thanks to the 32 film roll. 😄
3/10
Small things like a top , marbles , a rubber ball , or even a piece of cake with some frosting ( there was no concept of black forest cake ) used to make us insanely happy.
We valued each & every possession of ours.
And somehow never craved for more ...
A brilliant no frills book that offers a framework for thinking about how to improve your decision making , along with a set of tools that help execute it.
A few of my takeaways from this gem !
2/18
There are only 2 things that determine HOW your life turns out : LUCK & QUALITY OF DECISION MAKING.
We have some control over only one of those two things.
When you make better quality decisions, you increase the chances of good things happening to you.
3/18
Our objective is to choose an option that gains most ground in achieving our goals.
Sometimes which entails the least risk.
Thereby we examine the quality of the beliefs informing the decision,the available options & try to envisage the future based on our choices.