rawrrr
I’ve managed to keep my losses to a minimum these past few months but I’m still afraid to look at my portfolio every day… so I can only imagine how investors across the country are feeling.  I’m sure a lot of people are asking “What should I do in this Bear Market?”.  It seems like [...]

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Airlines are looking for quiet ways to raise fare prices and create more revenue. Of course they are. Oil prices are rapidly rising and the airline industry is in disarray. If you’re not careful, you may not even know about some of these fees until it’s too late! Here are 8 airline fees to watch [...]

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Woo-Hoo!  Finally, the last day of cognitive biases in investing! Let’s dive right in… 
Self serving bias is pretty similar to the fundamental attribution error.  The Fundamental attribution error says that other peoples successes and failures are a direct result of their actions while our own are attributed to situational factors. The self serving bias is [...]

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I was eating lunch at Tropical Smoothie Cafe yesterday when my friend turned to me and said “Dude, that [amazingly cute] girl over there is totally checking you out”.  I quickly dismissed his comment but he kept persisting, “No seriously, she keeps looking over at you”.  I probably just had some mustard on my face [...]

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I spent the day yesterday volunteering at Airpower Over Hampton Roads working at a soda booth concessionaire. I’m not the biggest fan of airshows or even planes but that left me with plenty of time to ponder.  As I often do, I thought about ways I could relate real life situations around me to business [...]

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Today’s cognitive bias is anchoring and its not only something I try to avoid in investing, it’s also something that I exploit in negotiations.  And you can too!  
When you’re negotiating and you know the inherent value of something, you can easily barter a fair price.  But when you’re unsure of an item’s value and the other [...]

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“Whenever someone else performs poorly or makes a mistake, it’s a direct result of their actions.  Whenever I make a mistake, it’s because of a circumstance I had no control over!”
This is the underlying position of the fundamental attribution error.  We have a tendency to over emphasize the result of other people’s actions as personality-based.  [...]

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How many of you knew that the Boston Celtics would win the NBA Finals?  Or that Tiger would win the U.S. Open?  Well how sure were you last week?
Or… you’re sitting at a Blackjack table in Las Vegas with a 7 and 5, the dreaded 12.  Do you stay or hit?
Stay: Dealer flips over and has [...]

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Yesterday, I wrote about what a cognitive bias is and listed six of them that can affect our psyche and the way we invest.  Today, I’ll go into detail on the first one: confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias describes our tendency to interpret information in a certain way to confirm what we already believe.  It also describes [...]

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So I woke up this morning around 6 AM, and started getting ready for work: take a shower, get dressed, grab breakfast, check stocks.  It was the same as any other weekday morning… until I checked my retirement portfolio.  I’ve been a little busy these past few days and haven’t had the opportunity to check my portfolio.  [...]

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For anyone that’s ever taken a Psychology or Behavioral Science class, you probably learned about something called “cognitive bias” (if you remember learning it… now that’s a different story).  Cognitive biases include a wide array of observed effects in social psychology that explain many of our inherently human biases.  Rather than looking at another technical side of investing, I [...]

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I booked a flight last week.  In three weeks, I’ll be travelling 2700 miles from one coast (Virginia Beach, VA) to the other (Orange County, CA).  Of course with the recent surge of oil prices and disastrous airline market, I was ready to pay a small premium on top of my standard $500 flight. That’s when an article caught [...]

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I’ve recently been asked by several friends and family what I thought about target date retirement funds since they are a fairly new investment vehicle.  What are they and should I invest in them?  Is it too good to be true?  Well let’s start off by establishing what a target date retirement fund is.  
A [...]

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Our credit report paints a picture of our financial credit history. It allows creditors to learn a lot about our financial behavior and tendencies without ever having to meet us. That history is consolidated into one single number: a credit score. So why should you care?
Any time you’re getting ready to buy new home, automobile, [...]

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With crude oil hovering at $130 a barrel, almost every personal finance article I’ve read has been about how you can conserve gas usage or save  money on gas prices.  Granted, it’s fun to jump on the bandwagon with whatever todays “hot topics” are.  But when you really break down your gas spending each month, it’s [...]

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If you are responsible for your households finances, you should have an emergency fund.  There will be unforeseen situations and expenses that arise in life and you want to make sure that you and your family are covered.  A few years back, one of my friends David had to learn this lesson the hard way.  He [...]

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Few people realize the importance of Asset Allocation when it comes to one’s investment portfolio. And possibly, for the day trading professional investor who trades millions of dollars every day, this might not be such an important concept. However, for the everyday American working class, each day at the office is all in support of [...]

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