Blair Hull . Jeff Yass . Peter Borish . There appears to be a pervasive human tendency toward overconfidence in one's beliefs. People are ready to act on stories or reasons that one might think they should have little confidence in.
People think they know more than they do.
They like to express opinions on matters they know little about, and they often act on these opinions. One factor as it relates to the speculative markets is 'magical thinking'. When we speak of people' s intuition about the likelihood that investments will do poorly and their own decisions to invest, we are speaking of their innermost thoughts - thoughts that they do not have to explain or justify to others. People will make serious decisions based on thinking that they would, if pressed, admit was illogical. And people will, if asked how much money they would demand to part with a lottery ticket they already hold, give a figure over four times greater if they themselves chose the lottery number on the ticket.