20 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Your Decisions

4H0ELM3

  1. People hear one person mention a stock – they have no idea who the person is, their qualifications, their knowledge of the stock, and they’ve never heard of the stock until just now. They proceed to buy it, buy into every dip, and months later post “so…any news on ___”
  2. Well, for the 1 month I’ve been following this random stock, it twice dipped and recovered so I’ll buy into this 10% “dip” based on terrible company news
  3. r/wallstreetbets
  4. Applies to everyone but me
  5. “I’m thinking about maybe going long XXX, any thoughts” Person who is short XXX for no reason other than they think a 100 year old company will go bankrupt tomorrow because they had one customer service complaint “LOL YOU STUPID IDIOT, WHO WOULD GO LONG XXX?!?!!?”
  6. TA used by people that learned about it via one 3-minute Youtube video
  7. Not my fault you’re all wrong
  8. The outcome of every meme stock. “I’m down 10%, holding” “I’m down 30%, holding” “I’m down 90%, holding”
  9. 1,000 posts a day here with a variety of information and demonstrated successful strategies and you just continue to buy 3x ETFs
  10. Getting so upset with the performance of your 3x ETFs that you stop clicking other posts at all
  11. This is the most serious one that costs people here the most money. Just because you took a bet on something and it worked out doesn’t mean the reason you did it was anything more than a pure gamble and does not make a repeatable strategy
  12. Connected to #11 – thinking you’re the greatest trader in history when 7 out of 10 gambles go your way then plowing your whole life saving into the same “strategies”
  13. If I just buy everytime the stock drops 0.5% my basis will eventually be zero and I’ll have free money
  14. 3x ETFs
  15. Well, this is a semiconductor company that’s been around for decades and there’s zero reason to assume that it will suddenly break out beyond the market as a whole but they do have a new product that’s a direct competitor for existing product so its probably my moonshot
  16. XXX makes an amazing product that’s the cool new thing. I won’t focus on the fact they have $10 billion in debt and if they don’t sell more of that product than the world could ever possibly consume they’re going bankrupt by year end
  17. The market must always go up.
  18. Assuming that no one here could possibly be a stock pumper. People worry about r/hailcorporate and big uses selling their accounts to companies but surely if u/completerandothatsnewhere mentions a stock that trades two shares a day he has my best interest in mind
  19. Not realizing that people that posted here a lot and disappear are fairly likely to have lost all their money and be in some desperate situation somewhere which could easily happy to any of us
  20. The market must always go up.

The mother of all conspiracies.

One of the most frightening theories is one of the simplest. There is no conspiracy, there is no illuminati or small group of hidden, super rich, mega powerful leaders. Everybody is just looking out for their own, and following their own beliefs.

All the travesties and pain in the world are because of that. (Source)

I think this is why so many people believe in conspiracy theories. They’re comforted by the idea that someone is in control and steering the ship, so to speak. Even if they have bad or evil intentions, at least someone is in charge.

The reality is that the world is rudderless. Even the “powerful” people can do relatively little. There’s nobody really in charge.

I’m not saying that powerful people don’t exert an enormous amount of influence or that certain groups don’t conspire in some ways to achieve ends that are less than good for mankind. All I’m saying is that, at the end of the day, they’re just people and they do the same stupid things we all do, and are subject to all our same flaws. They’re not superhuman.