In their classic book Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, Thomas Gilovich and Gary Belsky looked at the psychology of financial decisions.

In his new book Your Money & You Brain, Jason Zweig goes a step further, looking at both behavioral economics and the neurological side of it. The result is a fascinating look at the tricks that our minds play on us, and how they keep us from investing as well as we could.

As Zweig writes, a mile long time-line of human history would not show the first financial markets until about four inches from the end. Evolution has given us brains that are very well-equipped for fleeing from gazelles but, alas, prone to a lot of stupid mistakes when it comes to investing. And this applies to "sophisticated professionals" as well as rank amateurs.

Extensively researched -- Mr. Zweig took part in numerous experiments -- this book will give you new and profound insight into how you think about money. Every serious investor should read this book, although few will because it offers no get-rich-quick scheme or concrete tips on how to beat the market.

But it's very readable and funny in parts, and definitely one of the more entertaining investment books to come out in recent memory.

Book review: Your Money & Your Brain originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We know that younger drivers are more likely to get in accident than drivers in their forties. This probably is due to a combination of factors -- a lack of experience plays a role, but also teenagers tend to process situations and evaluate risk differently than their older counterparts.

Is the same true for investing? Money's Jason Zweig looks at the ways that senior citizens are likely to differ from younger investors: "New research by finance professor Alok Kumar shows that the average investor exhibits an 'abrupt and significant drop in performance around the age of 70,' probably because of fading memory and rising impulsiveness."

It turns out that older investors may actually be less risk-averse, and more willing to gamble, than their younger counterparts. Combine this with the tendency for memory problems and less agile mental processing in the later years, and you have a group of people who are extremely vulnerable to hucksters and charlatans selling life insurance, stocks, or business opportunities.

If you are concerned about your aging parents being targeted by con artists, check out Fraud.org's page on elder fraud and the Consumer Action's Elder Fraud Leader's Guide.

Who's the risk-averse investor: gramps or the young whippersnapper? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In his column "The Intelligent Investor" in the latest issue of Money Magazine, Jason Zweig offers some great tips for investors to "Stop worrying and stay invested" in the presence of a volatile markets. He also gives one of the best pieces of advice for trading that I have ever seen: "Wait for the bell. If the market is open, your portfolio should be closed. Later you can be more objective."

Don't worry about missing opportunities: All the research shows that frequent trading kills performance. Trading during the day will trick you into making impulsive investments, and make your regimen more gambler than cerebral. This also goes nicely with one of the best investing quotes of the year, from John Bogle's interview with the same magazine in March: "The stock market turns out to be a giant distraction from the reality of owning businesses, which is what investing really is. In the short run, expectations seem to drive the market, but in the long run nearly 100% of the returns on stocks come from the real market - the sum of dividend yield and earnings growth."

Zweig's advice is certainly something I plan to incorporate into my own investing. For more great insight from Zweig, buy the most recent edition of Benjamin Graham's classic book The Intelligent Investor, which has timely commentary from Zweig following each chapter.

Zweig: Don't trade when the market's open originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.