To Succeed in Investing, Don't Become Fixated by Your Own Success
The following factual story is from a US University experiment to understand the psychology of success. There has subsequently been many repeats of this experiment by different people in different locations.
The experiment asked people (experiment subjects) to guess the outcome of tossing a coin and measured how many times they guessed correctly and incorrectly.
On probability, if the coin is tossed you have a 50% chance of guessing correctly which way it will end up. The experiment required 500 tosses of the coin and the outcome followed the laws of probability of around half of the tosses producing a correct guess. This probability outcome is fairly well understood by the experiment subjects, and people generally.
What you may not be aware of is that in the 500 tosses there is a fairly good chance that you will put together three or four runs of guessing five tosses in a row correctly. And here is where the psychology of success takes hold. What the university experiment did was asked the people guessing the outcome of the toss how they felt about their performance at various times.
What they found was that when people were having successful runs - four or five or six correct guesses in a row - that they believed that they themselves were responsible for this success. Reasons ranged from, I am getting better at this, to I am now concentrating harder and that is improving my performance.
Remember that all these people taking part in the experiment know that the outcome of a guess is based on a 50% probability outcome. Yet these same rational and normal people believe that when they guess a few coin tosses in a row correctly that it is due to their own talent and ability. The psychology of the brain is a scary thing.
Yet this happens with people investing in the stock market all the time - especially people new to investing and trading. After a winning trade or two or three, the investor or trader begins to believe that they have a special "talent" for stocks and shares. They begin to believe that they are naturally better than the average trader.
The outcome, before too long, is that the investor's belief in their own ability results in over confidence. This over confidence results in trading too many stocks or trading without managing the risk inherent in any trade. Unfortunately the stock market has a nasty habit of slapping down over confident traders with a big loss.
The lesson to be learnt here is that every trade or investment involves risk and that every trader needs to manage the risk in every trade. This means not getting carried away with your successes and protecting your capital every step of the way. Beware the Market Slap! - 23229
The experiment asked people (experiment subjects) to guess the outcome of tossing a coin and measured how many times they guessed correctly and incorrectly.
On probability, if the coin is tossed you have a 50% chance of guessing correctly which way it will end up. The experiment required 500 tosses of the coin and the outcome followed the laws of probability of around half of the tosses producing a correct guess. This probability outcome is fairly well understood by the experiment subjects, and people generally.
What you may not be aware of is that in the 500 tosses there is a fairly good chance that you will put together three or four runs of guessing five tosses in a row correctly. And here is where the psychology of success takes hold. What the university experiment did was asked the people guessing the outcome of the toss how they felt about their performance at various times.
What they found was that when people were having successful runs - four or five or six correct guesses in a row - that they believed that they themselves were responsible for this success. Reasons ranged from, I am getting better at this, to I am now concentrating harder and that is improving my performance.
Remember that all these people taking part in the experiment know that the outcome of a guess is based on a 50% probability outcome. Yet these same rational and normal people believe that when they guess a few coin tosses in a row correctly that it is due to their own talent and ability. The psychology of the brain is a scary thing.
Yet this happens with people investing in the stock market all the time - especially people new to investing and trading. After a winning trade or two or three, the investor or trader begins to believe that they have a special "talent" for stocks and shares. They begin to believe that they are naturally better than the average trader.
The outcome, before too long, is that the investor's belief in their own ability results in over confidence. This over confidence results in trading too many stocks or trading without managing the risk inherent in any trade. Unfortunately the stock market has a nasty habit of slapping down over confident traders with a big loss.
The lesson to be learnt here is that every trade or investment involves risk and that every trader needs to manage the risk in every trade. This means not getting carried away with your successes and protecting your capital every step of the way. Beware the Market Slap! - 23229
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posted by X - Men @ 8:00 AM
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