Emotionally charged in investing

Jes , 2 Comments

Have you ever scolded or cursed a villain in a show and silently rooting and cheering for the hero? It's natural to crave for happy endings. That is why we feel that the villains are always ugly and heroes are always good looking. Our emotions affect us strongly, even affecting our perception of the person's character. That is called physiognomy.

So how can we not be affected by emotions when we buy stocks?
Unless we can be stationary like him... 
They rule our every decision. When money is concerned, we become even more emotionally charged. That is why we may prefer some familiar stocks that have provided excellent services to us like Facebook, Apple, Capitaland Malls or Singapore Airlines. Similarly, we blame these stocks for making us 'under happy', for example SMRT, Starhub, Singtel.

Most successful brand that influences how we feel (Source: Wikipedia)
It may not be rational but I think there may be a certain truth in it.

If a companies' services have exceeded satisfaction and you tell your network of friends, it will not cause any ripples. But if many people start causing the chain reaction, market sentiments will be creating the fluctuations. Granted, there will not be enough to move the stocks as we are not the big boys. But the traders on the big companies are also humans and emotional, wouldn't they also feel the same way if the service is really impressive?

That is why market perception is so important and marketing services are crucial to shape the minds of the masses. This is how we put our emotions to good use but most times, we may also be negatively affected by it. Fearful and greedy are common to all of us.

Our varied emotions.. (Source: Wikipedia)
The brain if allowed to rule only, will not hesitate to average down or delay selling off in a bull market. One will never lose sleep over stocks or panic when we see bad news. Just look at cold hard statistics and decide where to go... Alas, it's not possible.

But we can try.

We keep trying and make mistakes and learn and maybe commit the same mistakes and reflect and grow wiser. After all, we are not infallible. We and our partners should not be too hard on us as these mistakes may just define our success. Life is a journey and these errors only make us human. We allow ourselves time to wallow in our misery and pick ourselves up and move on. We remember the pain and the mistakes and may leave behind scars.

But we move on.
"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything" - John Wooden
That is how we experience life and remember the learning times fondly. The biggest mistake we can make is if we are too afraid to make one. Those are the time we feel, we ache, we cheer, we live.

Let's enjoy our life as it is.
Y.O.L.O

Jes

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2 comments:

  1. B28 Nov 2014, 22:23:00

    Hi Jes

    Ita hard to pick out and support the evil guy in the movie, just like how its difficult to find a stock that no one likes.

    Everyone goes for familiarity and because of that they dont generally offer much value on the table.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jes1 Dec 2014, 10:45:00

    Hi B,

    Heroes winning and happy endings are kinda predictable. Which is why the movies like Maleficent, Despicable Me reverses the role and recent superheroes movies like Spiderman, Batman are all about portraying them as less god-like and explore their dark side.

    Yeah, I can't harden myself and buy SMRT stocks even though the huge discounts to NAV previously.

    ReplyDelete

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