Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of March 15, 2016

Article Excerpt

Every investor has to live with all-too-human tendencies that influence our decision-making. You have these tendencies for a reason, but sometimes that reason works against your investment goals. To succeed as an investor, you need to recognize these tendencies, and take control of them. Reaction to danger. This is one of the oldest human tendencies. It goes back to the millennia that our ancestors spent on the African savannah, hiding from saber-toothed tigers and other megafauna, not to mention marauding neighbours. To stay alive, we learned to keep a constant eye out for danger, react quickly, and run fast at the first sign of trouble. False alarms were frequent, of course. But the odds favoured running at any hint of risk. If we ran, we stayed alive, and at times we happened upon a new berry patch, a bird’s nest full of eggs, or a small rodent for our next meal. Investors have at least some natural tendency to react the…