Julia Dhar

Of course, it also reveals that sometimes we are more impulsive, less deliberate, more self-focused than would also be ideal for us.

And so the whole mission of people like myself trying to bring behavioral science into the real world is actually to make it useful for people to say, you have a set of goals and you have a set of visions for your life.

You have a set of expectations for your team.

How do we make it more predictable, more likely that those can be a reality?

Let's talk first about our own behavior.

It's delightful to try and change other people, but perhaps the most predictable person that we can change is ourself.

I know it's much more annoying to try and change yourself.

You've got to work with where you are.

And so the reason I say that is let's talk first about our own behavior, but then also about the behavior inside companies and organizations.

So there are two really big challenges or opportunities that we have in our own investing behavior.

And one is a tendency that we have when we have a belief or an expectation or a hope in our mind.

which, let's be honest, very often is how we start out making an individual investment choice or to continue to buy or sell an individual stock.

We want something about the story we are telling ourselves or the analysts or the market are telling us about it to be true.

We want it to be true.

And that will guide our view, our outlook on the company over the long term.

Sometimes that story will overwhelm what we see or observe in the data.

So the number one lesson is to say, in life, feelings and facts

are both very important.

But a feeling is not a fact.

And being able to untangle the difference between a feeling that I have, something that I hope is true, and facts that are being placed in front of me is perhaps the most valuable skill any of us could learn in all of investing.