75: Behavioural Finance Australia's Simon Russell – Equities, Selling Discipline and Biases

[i3] Institutional Investment Podcast

In this episode of the [i3] Podcast, we speak with Simon Russell, Founder and Director of Behavioural Finance Australia, about his new book: ‘Behavioural Finance: A Guide for Listed Equities Teams’. We talk about how institutional investors are not immune to biases, even if they are aware of them. The application of behavioural finance to selling discipline and the relationship between intelligence and these biases. Enjoy the Show! Overview of Podcast with Simon Russell: 01:00 How this the new book come about? 04:00 Biases are not just the domain of retail investors 04:50 Regression to the mean 07:00 Retail investors usually don’t have their own earnings forecast models and so are not susceptible to biases around regression to the mean in that context 08:00 Awareness of biases is rarely sufficient, but it is a good starting point 11:30 Issues around selling decisions 13:00 There is a bias towards seeing sell decisions as the result of an investment mistake 15:00 On overconfidence and uncertainty; we actually know much less than we think we do 19:00 Biases are not always the main culprit of poor decisions. Often it is just about noise. 20:00 Precommitment strategies in case of losses 25:00 Confirmation biases; they are hard to deal with because they are subconscious. 31:00 Often we are told to take the emotion out of investment decisions, but Antonio Damasio shows in his book ‘Descartes’ Error’ that without emotions people are completely indecisive 32:00 Can we ever rely on gut instinct? 35:00 Can fostering a certain corporate culture mitigate the worst effects of behavioural biases, for example Ray Dalio and his philosophy of radical transparency? Yes, culture is important. 40:00 IQ and behavioural biases: can we outsmart them? 42:00 Cognitive reflective test 44:00 Checklists can come in handy. They are not there to teach you how to do things, but to remind you of things you might forget. 45:00 Next book might be on unlisted asset investors Check out Simon Russell’s new book, ‘Behavioural Finance: A Guide for Listed Equities Teams, here: https://www.amazon.com.au/Behavioural-Finance-guide-listed-equities/dp/0994610254/