I recently came across a post on the Victor Niederhoffer Blog about the concept of Confirmatory Bias. I shall reprint the standard quote from Sir Francis Bacon that is used in much of the literature on this subject:"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. An...

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Investing Carnival. Last week the Carnival was subtitled the "Bear Market" edition so based on the partial rebound the last few days, I will call this week the Dead Cat Bounce Edition. KCLau presents How to Calculate Your Investment Portfolio Return? This is a solid primer on how to calculate your investment returns, which is not as easy as it sounds. His blog i...

I recently came across a post on the Victor Niederhoffer Blog about the concept of Confirmatory Bias. I shall reprint the standard quote from Sir Francis Bacon that is used in much of the literature on this subject:"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. An...

I recently came across a post on the Victor Niederhoffer Blog about the concept of Confirmatory Bias. I shall reprint the standard quote from Sir Francis Bacon that is used in much of the literature on this subject:"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. An...

I just saw this headline in the Wall Street Journal a few minutes ago:"WASHINGTON--The Securities and Exchange Commission announced an emergency action aimed at reducing short-selling that targets Wall Street brokerage firms as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and will immediately begin considering new rules to extend new requirements to the rest of the market."Not only will it involve selling s...