Mark Ritchie . Joe Ritchie . Blair Hull . Jeff Yass . Peter Borish .
People tend to fixate on the price paid for a stock or commodity.
This can cause you to hold on to losers, or even worry about selling winners. In experiments, he finds he can convince one person to accept that listening to a loud noise is worth, say, a dime, and persuade another person to take a dollar for the same unpleasant experience. Afterward, both cling to their starting values as a reference point. Put another way, it's the all too natural ability to convince ourselves of whatever it is that we want to believe. We simply give more weight to events that support our desired outcome than to any evidence to the contrary.