What Can Sherlock Holmes Teach Investors?

In the first full length Sherlock Holmes novel ‘A Study in Scarlet’ the brilliant detective’s sidekick, Watson, is staggered to discover that Holmes is apparently not aware that the earth revolves around the sun.[i] Watson cannot comprehend how an astonishingly intelligent individual can be ignorant of such basic facts. Holmes, however, explains that he actively disregards and forgets…

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Seven Varieties of Stupidity

“There are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.” Thomas Mann. Many words have been expended on the nature of intelligence, while the topic of stupidity is comparatively neglected – even though it is all around us, screwing us up. That’s probably because we assume stupidity is just a lack…

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Noisy Decisions

Nobel memorial prize winner Daniel Kahneman is one of the world’s most famous psychologists, known particularly for his work identifying the role of cognitive bias in everyday decision making. In this edition of More or Less he talks to Tim Harford about his latest book, Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgement, in which he…

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