It's Your Brain, Man...
According to research firm Dalbar, Inc. Behavior is the number one cause of investor underperformance.
At Intellectus,along with key partners, we are in the midst of some very extensive work on investor behavior. According to our friend Dr. Thomas Oberlechner, former MIT and Harvard Behavioral economist and Senior psychologist to some of the worlds top hedge funds, more than 25% of an average investor return can be attributed to his or her behaviors. That is more than 2x the cost of "fees" per se.
Our work has taken us into the realm of research and technology builds to discover behavioral biases and impact upon investing. This research is being turned into algorithms that can extract amazing insights and hints as to best ways to optimize your own behaviors and achieve better financial results through investing and other ares of your economic life.
According to Dalbar... regarding investor performance, the biggest reason for underperformance by investors who do participate in the financial markets over time is psychology. Behavioral biases that lead to poor investment decision-making is the single largest contributor to underperformance over time. Dalbar defined nine of the irrational investment behavior biases specifically:
Loss Aversion – The fear of loss leads to a withdrawal of capital at the worst possible time. Also known as "panic selling."
Narrow Framing – Making decisions about on part of the portfolio without considering the effects on the total.
Anchoring – The process of remaining focused on what happened previously and not adapting to a changing market.
Mental Accounting – Separating performance of investments mentally to justify success and failure.
Lack of Diversification – Believing a portfolio is diversified when in fact it is a highly correlated pool of assets.
Herding– Following what everyone else is doing. Leads to "buy high/sell low."
Regret – Not performing a necessary action due to the regret of a previous failure.
Media Response – The media has a bias to optimism to sell products from advertisers and attract view/readership.
Optimism – Overly optimistic assumptions tend to lead to rather dramatic reversions when met with reality.
The biggest of these problems for individuals is the "herding effect" and "loss aversion."
These two behaviors tend to function together compounding the issues of investor mistakes over time. As markets are rising, individuals are lead to believe that the current price trend will continue to last for an indefinite period. The longer the rising trend last, the more ingrained the belief becomes until the last of "holdouts" finally "buys in" as the financial markets evolve into a "euphoric state."
As the markets decline, there is a slow realization that "this decline" is something more than a "buy the dip" opportunity. As losses mount, the anxiety of loss begins to mount until individuals seek to "avert further loss" by selling. As shown in the chart below, this behavioral trend runs counter-intuitive to the "buy low/sell high" investment rule.
Investor-Psychology-Cycle-062414
In the end, we are just human. Despite the best of our intentions, it is nearly impossible for an individual to be devoid of the emotional biases that inevitably lead to poor investment decision-making over time. This is why all great investors have strict investment disciplines that they follow to reduce the impact of human emotions.
More importantly, despite studies that show that "buy and hold," and "passive indexing" strategies, do indeed work over very long periods of time; the reality is that few will ever survive the downturns in order to see the benefits. But then again, since the majority of American's have little or no money with which to invest, maybe a bigger problem is the lack of financial education to begin with.
Comments