Whitney Tilson from November 2008 (height of the financial crisis) an Introduction to Value Investing:
What is Behavioral Finance?
Peter Bernstein in Against the Gods states that the evidence “reveals repeated patterns of irrationality, inconsistency, and incompetence in the ways human beings arrive at decisions and choices when faced with uncertainty.”
Behavioral finance attempts to explain how and why emotions and cognitive errors influence investors and create stock market anomalies such as bubbles and crashes. But are human flaws consistent and predictable such that they can be: a) avoided and b) exploited for profit?
Why is Behavioral Finance Important?
“Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ…Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.” — Warren Buffett
