I am delighted to introduce a guest blog by Dr Daniel Richards about some research we collaborated on. The disposition effect describes a bias that causes investors to be more willing to sell investments that have risen in in value than those that have fallen in value. Our research shows that investors who rely less on emotions and intuition and investors who manage their emotions more effectively are less likely to show this investment bias.
Myself and Jacqui Gabb discuss the importance of money and emotions in relationships.
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” —Ursula K. LeGuin To listen to some scholars of decision-making, it is a great wonder that humans have survived as long as they have. We are constantly prone to biases, rely on simplistic […]
I am delighted to introduce a guest blog by Kevin Rodgers, formerly global head of foreign exchange at Deutsche Bank, with an impressive career in trading. Kevin is also the author of a great new book which charts the major changes in investment banking ‘Why aren’t they shouting?’, not to mention a pretty good opera singer.
Mark Fenton-O’Creevy
My first anxiety dreams came to me within a couple of weeks of starting my career on a trading floor and were about an almost laughably trivial worry – whether I could operate the bank’s pricing software. It was 1990, I was at Merrill Lynch and, fresh out of business school, my job as a junior options trader in the bank’s Foreign Exchange (FX) trading team meant making prices using a tool called FENICS. Replete with knowledge gleaned from business school finance classes, I understood what I was doing but the physical task of typing in the pricing parameters was rather tricky: I was often doing so one-handed (while cradling a phone with the other), and always under time pressure in a ringing cacophony of noise. My dreams took an increasingly familiar pattern: I had an important price to make; the market was moving but I simply couldn’t type the numbers into the right places on the screen; the client’s sales contact was shouting at me to hurry up with increasing urgency and volume. Then I’d wake up with a sudden start in the darkness. Continue reading
Successful fraud requires both a set of skills and a willingness to deliberately target and deceive others. The most successful fraudsters have a capacity to look us in the eye, to engage our trust and then betray it without a qualm. This capacity is actually quite rare and often associated with personality disorder (or perhaps […]
“Money doesn’t talk it swears” Bob Dylan Differences in attitudes to money are a major cause of disagreements in relationships. Research shows that financial disagreements are one of the more frequent and less easily resolved causes of relationship conflict. One study found that whilst people are often attracted to potential partners with different emotional reactions to spending, that […]
Let’s call him James, a trader in a City investment bank; young, smartly dressed, confident, and a little impatient. He sat across from me in the interview:
“It’s really important to stay cool. For myself, I can say that I really don’t have much emotion while I trade”.
Half an hour later, as he relaxed a little, the façade had started to crack:
“Actually the pressure can be horrendous, a trade goes badly wrong, you are staring into black hole, frozen, knowing you should get out but just hoping the market will turn . . I rushed off the desk and threw up in the toilet – I was terrified”.
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Here is a link to my interview with Michael Considine of Share Radio. Where I talk about my research on emotions and investment and the work of the True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance.
Hermit crabs rely on acquiring discarded shells for their protection and are constantly on the look-out for better shells. However, faced with environmental stress they prefer to stick with their old shell, however unsuitable, than risk moving to a new one[i]. Experiments with rats show that under stress habitual behaviour persists longer in the face […]
The Open University’s centre for the Public UnderStanding of Finance (PUFin) launches new MOOC Lead educator: Martin Upton, Director of the True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance (PUFin) at the Open University Business School, and former Treasurer of Nationwide Business Society Gain the skills to manage your personal finances: managing budgets, debts, […]
