Last week I had the opportunity to present to the Ladies Business Group, a local organization of female business owners and decision-makers. The agenda was to discuss investments by way of sharing the mistakes made by myself and others, the lesson being that risk management is more than preparing a portfolio for rising interesting rates or positioning it from a prolonged trade war, or even reallocating assets during a bear market.
The front line of defense in protecting the value of your capital isn’t determining what to buy or sell, rather it’s the understanding of why we make irrational decisions, using awareness as a means of prevention. That list includes buying something just because it’s gone up recently (scientifically referred to “recency bias”), jumping on the latest mania (i.e. Bitcoin), or confusing “familiar” with “safe.”