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Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

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TheMotorcycleBoy
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Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274586

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » January 2nd, 2020, 12:27 pm

Hi Si,

Thanks for the book suggestions. Me being a total bookworm (I don't really watch TV!), you recommending books in a double edged i) all recommendations are great ii) you are just adding to ever growing reading list :roll: .

simoan wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:
You need to try and negate this as much as possible. Your task in 2020 is to read some behavioural economics books... Kahnemann & Tversky, Richard Thaler, Dan Ariely

Hmm.. Yes thanks I might start a book thread sometime and requote you if you don't mind. That is, so that you can confirm/deny the titles/links that Amazon throws up.

OK. Here are a few book suggestions for starters (in no particular order):

1. Kahnemann & Tversky: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast- ... 0141033576

I've actually already got this! It's a tough read, I thought. Did you read it all? A few months back I got about a third of the way in. That is, I got as far as the chapters "The law of small numbers" (very good) and the one called "Anchors". I'm now trying to "get back into it".

My initial impressions of the book are that I believe DK definitely hits the truth with his System I and System 2 mental states (somewhat a shame his names are a little bland!). But in my opinion he is on the nose with the impulsive, intuitive System I, and the more slow, measured and lazy System 2. He then builds the concept of "cognitive ease and strain" onto this. This is something I can relate to all too well, since my job as a computer programmer requires an almost permanent state of "cognitive strain" and an activation of my system 2. I find it all too easy for S2 to get lazy and browse fora and online news!!


Ariely has come with an oblique ref. from DSPP over here viewtopic.php?p=274579#p274579, so it could be worth a punt.


It looks interesting.

Core premises of economic theory are that people choose by optimizing (rational choices) and that supply equals demand (price equilibrium). These premises assume that economic decisions are taken by a selfish and rational agent: the homo economicus, the 'Econ'. But, the models based on those premises can generate flawed results and a lot of bad predictions. Econs exist only in a fictional world, not in the real world inhabited by Humans.
The economists guild should earnestly reckon with human psychology and the social sciences. They should not exclude supposedly irrelevant factors (SIFs) in their analyses, like 'sunk costs' (money already spent) or 'loss aversion'. Other generally accepted axioms, like the precept that buying and selling prices should be about the same or that more choices are always preferred to fewer, belong to a virtual, not a real world. People have well-defined preferences and self-control problems, while professional economists are misled by theory-induced blindness.

I'm a little put off by the odd reviewer describing it as quite a hard slog. But then again, a lot of these types of books are, i.e. no pain no gain.

And for good measure, a book that has been really important for me and greatly reduced my contributions to public forums - see chapter 3 on the power of commitment and consistency :)

4. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Psyc ... N2Z7D9KZM5

This is another with really mixed reviews!

Can you possibly summarise what you got from ch 3. i.e. "greatly reduced my contributions to public forums". (FWIW my own anxieties re. writing own public forum stem from views of earlier OCD traits of mine, i.e. "are my contributions merely an attempt to exert my influence/control on other's opinions?". Then I realise the futility of this - i.e. most other contributors will *probably* have similar mindsets - thus I speculate whether how much of it is just mass self-gratification.)

Matt

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274587

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » January 2nd, 2020, 12:29 pm


simoan
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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274598

Postby simoan » January 2nd, 2020, 1:09 pm

Matt,

None of these books are what I would call "easy reading" - that's just the nature of the topic and the fact the books are written by acclaimed academics trying their best to dumb down their research for the likes of you and me. I find you don't have to read the whole book to get the most out of them and the chapters can mostly be read standalone. I think I made it about two thirds the way through the Kahnemann book but I re-read the chapter on anchoring every now and then!

I don't generally pay much attention to Amazon reviews for books, funnily enough, because doing that induces it's own influence :) (see Cialdini chapter 4: "Social Proof"). Instead I normally buy books recommended to me by people whose judgement I trust. After all, the people giving on-line reviews are more likely to give a bad review if they didn't enjoy a book than write a good one if they did! That's just human nature... and of course you don't know their real motives for doing a review at all. The Dan Ariely books on Irrationality are worth more than a punt. You don't have to read them all but the first one is worth a few pounds of your hard earned.

Can you possibly summarise what you got from ch 3. i.e. "greatly reduced my contributions to public forums". (FWIW my own anxieties re. writing own public forum stem from views of earlier OCD traits of mine, i.e. "are my contributions merely an attempt to exert my influence/control on other's opinions?". Then I realise the futility of this - i.e. most other contributors will *probably* have similar mindsets - thus I speculate whether how much of it is just mass self-gratification.)

Anything you write down, even a post in an anonymised on-line forum, which makes a case for investing or not investing will affect your off-line investing behaviour. There's no point others saying it doesn't and they are some kind of super human being, because it does FWIW I have no interest in discussing this. This is why you will never find me starting a discussion thread on investing due to the feeling of "ownership" and reinforcement it induces. I don't want that and the best way to avoid it is to avoid posting those thoughts. So I have greatly reduced my activity since Motley Fool days. You will never see me putting forward an investment idea, offering buy/sell advice, or publishing details of my portfolio. This is from accumulated experience of over 20 years investing and using on-line BB's. It works for me!

All the best, Si

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274612

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » January 2nd, 2020, 2:26 pm

Thanks again Si!

simoan wrote:Matt,

None of these books are what I would call "easy reading" - that's just the nature of the topic and the fact the books are written by acclaimed academics trying their best to dumb down their research for the likes of you and me. I find you don't have to read the whole book to get the most out of them and the chapters can mostly be read standalone. I think I made it about two thirds the way through the Kahnemann book but I re-read the chapter on anchoring every now and then!

I'm glad it's not just me then. Anyway once I switch this damn PC off, I'll get back into it..... (along with "The History of Pi" by Petr Beckmann, I've already read histories of e, and i, so I thought I owed it to pi, too!)

I don't generally pay much attention to Amazon reviews for books, funnily enough, because doing that induces it's own influence :) (see Cialdini chapter 4: "Social Proof"). Instead I normally buy books recommended to me by people whose judgement I trust. After all, the people giving on-line reviews are more likely to give a bad review if they didn't enjoy a book than write a good one if they did! That's just human nature... and of course you don't know their real motives for doing a review at all

I know you what mean.

The Dan Ariely books on Irrationality are worth more than a punt. You don't have to read them all but the first one is worth a few pounds of your hard earned.

Fair enuff. Will pick up a used
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Ir ... 0061854549
and take it from there.

Matt

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274615

Postby simoan » January 2nd, 2020, 2:36 pm

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Fair enuff. Will pick up a used
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Ir ... 0061854549
and take it from there.

Matt

If you're not in a rush sometimes the Kindle versions can be bought for 99p. I got tipped off over Xmas by a friend and bought the excellent book "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland for 99p. I then also noticed that the Kindle version of Howard Marks latest book "Mastering the Market Cycle" was also 99p!! Two great books for £1.98. Alas they are now back to full price :(

All the best, Si

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274619

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » January 2nd, 2020, 2:49 pm

I'm a real luddite with books I'm afraid Si. I love paper ones.

I do own a cheap digital tablet, but I always stick to old skool books for reads!

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274621

Postby simoan » January 2nd, 2020, 3:00 pm

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I'm a real luddite with books I'm afraid Si. I love paper ones.

I do own a cheap digital tablet, but I always stick to old skool books for reads!

Well, I'm a luddite too and prefer real books but someone bought me a new Kindle for Xmas and I can't resist the 99p special offers :)

My resolution this year is to read more books and less on-line garbage.
All the best, Si

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#274624

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » January 2nd, 2020, 3:16 pm

simoan wrote:My resolution this year is to read more books and less on-line garbage.

Bloody good idea!

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#277121

Postby Charlottesquare » January 13th, 2020, 5:12 pm

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I'm a real luddite with books I'm afraid Si. I love paper ones.

I do own a cheap digital tablet, but I always stick to old skool books for reads!


Fine until you go overboard and find you need to have more rooms in the house. (though will be losing my son this year so that frees a room if he takes his clutter with him)

We eventually had to take a stand when we discovered we were over 3,000 books and rising, they were taking over our lives.

We took a few hundred to our holiday house over a couple of years where we now have 4 IKEA full height Billy bookcases ,double stacked, we also offloaded a fair few to charity shops and kept the rest- we are now down to 2x60 and 2x80 full height with topbox extension Billy bookcases here plus 3x80 lower height ones, 2 of them double stacked, and about 800 books on the Kindle account.

So beware, real books are great but they are also seductive.

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#277280

Postby servodude » January 14th, 2020, 10:01 am

Charlottesquare wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I'm a real luddite with books I'm afraid Si. I love paper ones.

I do own a cheap digital tablet, but I always stick to old skool books for reads!


Fine until you go overboard and find you need to have more rooms in the house. (though will be losing my son this year so that frees a room if he takes his clutter with him)

We eventually had to take a stand when we discovered we were over 3,000 books and rising, they were taking over our lives.

We took a few hundred to our holiday house over a couple of years where we now have 4 IKEA full height Billy bookcases ,double stacked, we also offloaded a fair few to charity shops and kept the rest- we are now down to 2x60 and 2x80 full height with topbox extension Billy bookcases here plus 3x80 lower height ones, 2 of them double stacked, and about 800 books on the Kindle account.

So beware, real books are great but they are also seductive.



With regret I left most of my books behind in the UK when I emigrated (except for collections and graphic stuff). I had been a 3 books from Tesco a week guy for years, to pass time commuting, sharing them with family, and book drop offs.
The Kindle was released within a year or two of me arriving in Australia, It was a revelation.
The kicker for me was the out of print sci-fi stuff that I can now get on Kindle without having to wait, hope and pray that it turns up in a second hand store.
Carrying everything I might want in my pocket!
And now being able to read in bed with the right amount of light without waking the missus.
This had helped my sleeping no end, read till you're tired and close.
It's NOT a tablet, on first glance I didn't realise this.
it doesn't feel like one, it doesn't read like one.
And the bookcases.. that's where the graphic stuff lives ;)
But the CDs, and vinyl, they're with me till I die (and the Gretsch is getting buried with me!)

;)
-sd
(On his 3rd Kindle)

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#277582

Postby Charlottesquare » January 15th, 2020, 11:30 am

servodude wrote:
Charlottesquare wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I'm a real luddite with books I'm afraid Si. I love paper ones.

I do own a cheap digital tablet, but I always stick to old skool books for reads!


Fine until you go overboard and find you need to have more rooms in the house. (though will be losing my son this year so that frees a room if he takes his clutter with him)

We eventually had to take a stand when we discovered we were over 3,000 books and rising, they were taking over our lives.

We took a few hundred to our holiday house over a couple of years where we now have 4 IKEA full height Billy bookcases ,double stacked, we also offloaded a fair few to charity shops and kept the rest- we are now down to 2x60 and 2x80 full height with topbox extension Billy bookcases here plus 3x80 lower height ones, 2 of them double stacked, and about 800 books on the Kindle account.

So beware, real books are great but they are also seductive.



With regret I left most of my books behind in the UK when I emigrated (except for collections and graphic stuff). I had been a 3 books from Tesco a week guy for years, to pass time commuting, sharing them with family, and book drop offs.
The Kindle was released within a year or two of me arriving in Australia, It was a revelation.
The kicker for me was the out of print sci-fi stuff that I can now get on Kindle without having to wait, hope and pray that it turns up in a second hand store.
Carrying everything I might want in my pocket!
And now being able to read in bed with the right amount of light without waking the missus.
This had helped my sleeping no end, read till you're tired and close.
It's NOT a tablet, on first glance I didn't realise this.
it doesn't feel like one, it doesn't read like one.
And the bookcases.. that's where the graphic stuff lives ;)
But the CDs, and vinyl, they're with me till I die (and the Gretsch is getting buried with me!)

;)
-sd
(On his 3rd Kindle)


Afraid I was a charity bookshop fiend, not helped by the likes of Oxfam having bespoke bookshops (Do you know you can donate books to them under Gift Aid)

A Kindle is fine but I must admit books with maps I prefer in hard copy form- am currently reading "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" and need to keep checking the maps in the book plus at the same time have open "The Times Atlas of History "to make sense of where the author is actually talking about (especially with some of the name changes), Same would apply with a lot of history and travel books (Have for years believed hard copy books ought to have fold out maps at front so one can read and look at the maps without using bookmarks)

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#277755

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » January 16th, 2020, 6:27 am

Charlottesquare wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I'm a real luddite with books I'm afraid Si. I love paper ones.

I do own a cheap digital tablet, but I always stick to old skool books for reads!


Fine until you go overboard and find you need to have more rooms in the house. (though will be losing my son this year so that frees a room if he takes his clutter with him)

We eventually had to take a stand when we discovered we were over 3,000 books and rising, they were taking over our lives.

We took a few hundred to our holiday house over a couple of years where we now have 4 IKEA full height Billy bookcases ,double stacked, we also offloaded a fair few to charity shops and kept the rest- we are now down to 2x60 and 2x80 full height with topbox extension Billy bookcases here plus 3x80 lower height ones, 2 of them double stacked, and about 800 books on the Kindle account.

So beware, real books are great but they are also seductive.

Until, like me, you read the Black Swan (by Nassim Taleb). About one third in - a brilliant recommendation from Salvor. Then you read "Eco Umberto's AntiLibrary". Suddenly I realised I was like so many. Hoarding vast quantities of read books. Over emphasising knowledge learnt (books read) over knowledge not learnt (books unread).

So the Anti-library is one's collection of unread books.

My big problem is keeping authors' series (which I've already read most of). So this weekend I'm having a major cull. My Robert Goddards, Jo Nesbos, Eric Lustbaders, (had some for decades), any "rubbish" investment books, and various lesser knowns, will *all* be going. (The boring thing I need to do is, yes, implement an "I've already read this one, ignore in the next 2nd hand shop visit" journal. And carry the journal around at all times.)

(Maybe at some stage other family members may "lose" the cookery book or three :twisted: )

The library is dead, long live the anti-library!!

Matt

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Re: Behavioural investment reads inspired by Si

#301087

Postby dspp » April 16th, 2020, 1:07 pm

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:

Ariely has come with an oblique ref. from DSPP over here viewtopic.php?p=274579#p274579, so it could be worth a punt.

Matt


If anyone wishes to assist then Dan Ariely is doing a survey,

====
Hi,
I am trying to understand how people think about the coronavirus. If you have five minutes, please answer the survey below as truthfully as you can. We don't know the real answers to some of these questions about the virus, so please just give me your best estimate.
Dan Ariely


https://lnkd.in/e6fueCm or alternatively https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4Mf8i0bG73aUjyt
====

regards, dspp


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