Dan Brocklebank: Behave yourself

Beware ‘investor behaviour penalty’

clock • 5 min read

Successful investing requires taking a different perspective from the crowd but while that is all very well in theory, writes Dan Brocklebank, human nature can make it very hard to put it into practice

Investing is an unusual profession. If you went to 10 well-respected doctors and nine of them recommended a particular course of treatment for a knee injury, you would be foolish to ignore their advice. If the same proportion of investment gurus all recommended a particular stock, however, you would be wise to think twice before buying. In all likelihood, you would probably be better off betting against them. The key difference is that your knee does not know or care what the doctors think. This allows medical professionals to make a rational and fully detached assessment before getting ...

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