Say your mutuals are being maimed. You try to blame the market, but have a nagging suspicion that you, personally, have had a share in the disaster. Should you have dumped those stocks sooner, or held onto the mutuals longer, in an attempt to outlast the downturn. To economists, these questions are answered by cold-hearted analysis of numbers. But to those who study the mind, they're answered by a look inward.
Economists assume that the almighty buck is the great leveling tool.
In other words, the dollar of dividend you earn from an investment in The Why Files, Inc., is worth the same as the buck you could earn delivering the paper-only version of the Files. This is despite the fact that you would have to brave sleet and snow to deliver the paper, but you can sit back and watch the dividends deposit themselves in your cash account. But the irrationality of the market extends far beyond that. Investors buy dumb stocks. They dump promising stocks.