Overconfidence Bias Quotes

Individual investors beware: If you're constantly worried about a crash, you're probably making some big mistakes - and losing a lot of money in the process.

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Behavioral economics offers a plausible explanation for overreactions by the market. For example, a long period of bad performance can lead to stereotyping.

Most investors give too much credence to the theory that prices are rational; they presume that a market collapse must have been justified by serious economic trouble.

If overconfidence can cause the Roman Empire to fall, I ought to be able to get a ground ball.

So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.

When reviewing one's portfolio, it is important to be aware of common mental mistakes that may lead to bad decisions. The most powerful is commitment bias, which, as manifested in investing, is the tendency to fall in love with one's stocks.

The chief problem with the individual investor: He or she typically buys when the market is high and thinks it's going to go up, and sells when the market is low and thinks it's going to go down.

The wisest rule in investment is: when others are selling, buy. When others are buying, sell. Usually, of course, we do the opposite. When everyone else is buying, we assume they know something we don't, so we buy. Then people start selling, panic sets in, and we sell too.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.

When it comes to investing, you are your own worst enemy.

The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse.

You don't want to get too comfortable if you're winning and start trying to be a number 10.

Numerous academic studies have shown that amateur investors make poor traders - buying stocks for the wrong reasons, holding losers for too long, and acting on whims and emotions.

The average investor does significantly worse than a simple index... It's literally because of the way our brains are wired.

I think that survivorship bias, the survivorship bias is something I'm very acutely familiar with because of investing.

In a rising market, enough of your bad ideas will pay off so that you'll never learn that you should have fewer ideas.

Organizations may be better able to tame optimism than individuals are.