With all the talk of red states and blue states and regional politics, we live in a time where we often view anything not connected to us as “other.” But, oddly, at least in the Eastern United States, we have been connected across the 40th parallel by a single mountain range—the Appalachians—that has served for eons as a path not just for the hikers we see along Route 7 in the Berkshires, but by the flora and fauna that have travelled this same pathway.
Overconfidence leads investors to believe that they will be one of the few who succeed. It turns out that people who trade the most, presumably due to misplaced confidence, produce the lowest returns.
Do you know who gets the worst returns in the stock market? People who buy something because it’s gone up in price and sell something because it’s gone down in price. Time and time again, following the crowd has proven to be the stupidest thing in the world of investing.