Somehow I get the feeling that in active investing sunk cost fallacy, confirmation bias run rather rampant.
Confirmation Bias
We look for views but filters out to listen to the folks who agrees with our thesis. And it gets more comforting that our views are the general consensus.
The probable way to guard against this is to listen to fresh views or the alternative thesis, much akin to people telling you off. They might provide some counterbalance to a richly beautiful thesis.
Spend more time exploring the what if scenarios to test your investment in it. A good prospect will stand up against that.
The good thing is one that isn’t really rock solid will show more holes over time.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Margin of safety is not about you buying something low enough that you haven’t lose money yet, but the value of what an asset, business, to the best of your evaluation, is actually worth.
It means either a back of the envelope estimate, or even a deeper evaluation.
And it always is moving from this point forward.
We can’t turn back the clock saying hey we should have bought this when its that cheap, or that we shouldn’t buy that investment at all because its just bad.
You prospect a stock now going forward, whether its worth while to invest, if its not, what price will make a good price, not an old reference.
Yellow Pages, Sing Post and SPH are totally different businesses at different points in time, and you invest in them with different bits of information.
You may also be lured into the mentality that you got it cheap, have safety, and didn’t evaluate whether the best investment out there is actually one you already own. And you end up searching high and low for something when you have something better.
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Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.
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Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Insurance Start-up Havend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.
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