🐑 Why are we all sheep in the stock market?
The answer: our cognitive biases 🧠
And no one is spared!
(not even you who think you are different)
Here’s how to avoid them 👇
1️⃣ Human beings are social animals
We are wired to live in groups.
For thousands of years:
✅ Fitting in meant surviving.
❌ Isolating meant dying.
Result: we naturally imitate what the group does.
2️⃣ In the markets, this social pressure is everywhere
When everyone buys the same stock:
📈 We fear missing the train
😰 We doubt our own analyses
And we end up doing like the others
3️⃣ Why does our brain do this?
It has evolved to survive in groups:
✅ Seek approval
✅ Avoid exclusion
✅ Imitate others
Not to make rational decisions about listed companies.
4️⃣ Enemy No. 1: The anchoring bias
When a stock drops, we immediately think:
✅ "It was worth €100, at €70 it’s an opportunity."
Our brain loves to compare to the past.
Even if the past has no value today.
The price becomes a psychological benchmark, not an analysis data.
5️⃣ Enemy No. 2: The ego
When we buy a stock, we want to believe we were right.
- We modify our scenario instead of questioning it
- We seek confirmations rather than contradictions
6️⃣ Even experts are not spared.
A study on 3,8 million forecasts collected between 1994 and 2019 proves it:
- "Glamour" stocks are overrepresented
- Analysts often follow the trend
- Boldness is rare
7️⃣ And when all of this mixes
💥 Following the crowd
💥 Anchoring on the highs
💥 Influence of other investors
We get an explosive cocktail to create bubbles (or miss opportunities)
