(RTTNews) - The Australian stock market is trimming its early losses in mid-market trading on Monday, but extending the sharp losses in the previous session, despite the broadly positive cues from Wall Street on Friday. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index is falling below the 8,700.0
(RTTNews) - The Australian stock market is trimming its early losses in mid-market trading on Monday, but extending the sharp losses in the previous session, despite the broadly positive cues from Wall Street on Friday. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index is falling below the 8,700.0
Ployker/iStock via Getty Images The Biggest Threat to Investment Success? Emotions Every investor experiences periods of fear and enthusiasm because emotions will always influence investment decisions from time to time. We would be better off if this weren't the case, but we are all humans after all. Enthusiasm is great, but not when we are talking about successful investing. In one of the greates...
Ployker/iStock via Getty Images The Biggest Threat to Investment Success? Emotions Every investor experiences periods of fear and enthusiasm because emotions will always influence investment decisions from time to time. We would be better off if this weren't the case, but we are all humans after all. Enthusiasm is great, but not when we are talking about successful investing. In one of the greatest investment books of all time called "The Intelligent Investor," Benjamin Graham warned investors about becoming overly enthusiastic when it comes to making investment decisions. Market enthusiasm, he argued, acts as "an artificial stimulant" that creates fear of missing out (FOMO) or confirmation bias towards a stock. Rational analysis, Graham said, is often pushed aside by fear and greed. I'm a victim of emotions sabotaging my investment returns as well. Many times I have overexposed my position towards a stock that I liked and that continued to collapse further. By averaging down, my exposure to a single stock has been way too high more than once. It was greed and FOMO that led me to make irrational investment decisions. Since I have started to write down what securities I will buy with excess cash every month, this problem has been eliminated more or less. Emotions are best kept out of your investment journey. Why is this relevant? Well, REITs have been vastly underperforming the AI-infused tech stocks ( NDAQ ) in recent years, as you can see in the graph below. FOMO and investor greed have probably acted as a powerful amplifier of Nasdaq returns in recent years. Every day you can read another article in which some influential figure calls out the 'AI-bubble'. Seeking Alpha charts One day we will know if there is a real AI bubble going on that pushed the Nasdaq to all-time highs (or not). You can follow the herd or zoom out and (at least to some extent) try to mitigate your risk by looking at underpriced subsectors of the market to diversify your holdings or wait for t...