A recent study shows people are twice as likely to seek information that confirms their beliefs than they are to consider evidence that contradicts thems. WSJ Intelligent Investor columnist Jason Zweig tells Kelsey Hubbard how this “confirmation bias” can influence their financial decisions.
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In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
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November 16th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
See the book “Seeking Wisdom: Munger to Darwin” much more on this topic.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
How does one fight the bias that about 2/3 of Wall Street are greedy pr##ks?
November 16th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
How is this any different from people who seek affirmation of their political, religious, (fill in the blank) beliefs? In my opinion, most people allow their beliefs (certainty of the unknowable) to supersede their knowledge of the facts.
Some people call this insanity.
November 18th, 2009 at 11:12 am
My bias is that I am an idiot. Hard to shake it.