Unbiased Investor Reduce Financial Stress and Keep More of Your Money

Make better financial choices, reduce money anxiety, and grow your wealth

In Unbiased Investor: Reduce Financial Stress and Keep More of Your Money, Portfolio Manager at CIBC World Markets, Coreen Sol, delivers an inspiring and illuminating roadmap to investing success. In the book, you’ll explore the behavioral and psychological roadblocks to achieving optimal results from your portfolio and the strategies you can use to overcome them. You’ll learn to focus on basic economic principles—rather than harmful psychological biases—to reduce financial stress and reliably grow wealth.

The book also shows you how to:

• Recognize the decision-making shortcuts (heuristics) we use to navigate and understand the world around us
• Avoid counter-productive and ineffective risk-management strategies that decrease returns without mitigating risk
• Consider your own financial goals, personal preferences, and skills in the creation of a strategy to make good financial choices, consistently

A powerful and easy-to-follow handbook for everyday investors, Unbiased Investor shows readers from all kinds of background the foundational, straightforward behaviors and habits we need to embrace to realize financial security.

COREEN SOL, Chartered Financial Analyst, has helped investors avoid the impact of behavioral bias during extreme market events for more than three decades. She brings a unique view that combines an academic perspective with a compassionate understanding of how people feel about money in the real world. Coreen is a former adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, manages a private wealth practice in British Columbia, Canada, and sits as a director on the board of CFA Societies Canada, an advocacy organization for investment integrity.

INTRODUCTION: THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

CHAPTER 1: MAKING SENSE OF WHAT YOU SEE

Anchoring: An Invisible Hand

Representativeness: If it Walks Like a Duck

Money Illusion: The Rule of 72 and the Risk of Inflation

Recency Effect: A Clear and Present Danger

Reversion to the Mean: That Makes Sense but Doesn’t Answer Anything

Availability Bias and Distortion: Overestimating What You Can Easily Recall

Familiarity Bias: Recognizing a Stranger

Proportional Money Effect: Why We Save Pennies Only to Neglect Dollars

Mental Accounting: Pigeonholing Money

Endowment Effect: Loyalty Reward Points are Not Free Money

Status Quo Bias: The Influence of Inertia

CHAPTER 2: CONTROLLING RISK

Conservativism: Close but No Cigar

Gambler’s Fallacy: Heads or Tails?

Possibility and Certainty Effect: A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush

House Money and Break-Even Effect: What Just Happened?

Disposition Effect: The Worst Time to Lock in a Profit

Loss Aversion and False Risk Control: Anti Up!

CHAPTER 3: WANTING TO BE RIGHT

Overconfidence: We All Can’t Be Above Average

Hindsight Bias is Convincing: I knew it!

Cognitive Dissonance: The Grapes Were Sour Anyway

Confirmation Bias: Buying and Selling a Boat

Availability Bias, Recency Effect and Real Estate: House Prices Always Rise, Right?

Sunk Cost: Why Camping Seems Affordable

Barnum and Forer Effect: A Fool is Born Every Minute

Loss Aversion Undermines Your Beliefs: Trading Money for Sleep

Herd Mentality: Consensus Hurts Performance

CHAPTER 4: DEVELOPING YOUR PERSONAL ECONOMIC VALUES

Why Commit to the Eight Steps?

Personal Economic Values Workbook

CHAPTER 5: ADOPTING UNBIASED HABITS

The Point of Impact

Don’t Take it Personally

Quantify your returns

Keep a Journal of Investment Decisions

The Power of SMT

Negotiations

Just Pick One

Automate, Outsource, and Schedule

Stop Checking Your Investments

Establish Investment Constraints

Reframing Decisions

No Safety in Numbers

Money Doesn’t Care Where It Came From

Craft Your Personal Investment Policy Statement

I Knew-It-All-the-Time

Cut Your Losses

Trees Don’t Reach the Sky

In the Absence of Research

Be Average

The Unbiased Habit Checklist

CHAPTER 6: WHAT AN INVESTMENT ADVISOR CANNOT DO

The Bottom Line

Bull Markets and DIY

Is Passive Investing a Silver Bullet?

Intuition

Avoiding Hindsight Bias with Training

When to Trust Expert Investment Advice

Know What You Don’t Know

Bias Resistance

Portfolio Abandonment

CHAPTER 7: CAN MONEY BUY YOU HAPPINESS?

Happiness, Work, and Retirement

Happiness and Spending Money

Happiness and Gluttony

Health, Happiness, and Your Money

How Much is Enough?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.