Tuesday, April 8, 2008

All in the Psychology

Finding a company you know is undervalued is only half the battle. In my opinion at least 50% of investing is psychological. You have to be able to mentally be a lone wolf, and you have to have a very large threshold for pain, and you have to be able to take losses and not anchor. That is why Buffett has said every IQ point over 115 is wasted in investing. I know many individuals in the investing world whose IQ's are off the charts but are horrible investors if they are making the buy sell decisions.

Anyway with that intro I love psychology readings. Some of my favorite books are psychology books. They are just as valuable as something like You Can Be Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt. Here are two articles.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/04/sex-drives-men-to-take-ri_n_95169.html

A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles, sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-stereotyping-yourself-contributes-to-success&page=2

People's performance on intellectual and athletic tasks is shaped by awareness of stereotypes about the groups to which they belong. New research explains why— and how we can break free from the expectations of others.

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