Bullshift: How Optimism Bias Threatens Your Finances

People are unwittingly taking risks with their investments by entrusting them to advisors who are biased but don’t know it. Does your financial advisor tell you to hold on and never sell? That markets recover in the long run? Does your advisor have an optimistic disposition? Do they tell you not to worry, no matter what is going on in the outside world?In Bullshift, seasoned investment advisor John J. De Goey explores the hidden relationship between bias and financial markets. He makes clear that investors and financial advisors are not the rational decision makers that economic theory assumes them to be, and that “tried and true” investment advice is not always sound. He shows that advisors are immersed in a culture of bullshift — they simply don’t realize how their positive outlook on markets is based on industry-wide groupthink.After three years of an international pandemic, there’s more pain coming, but the financial industry’s eternal optimism, abetted by government policies designed to consistently encourage growth and avoid tough choices, is walking the global economy toward a cliff.De Goey helps you prepare for the world after the reckoning in financial markets. The next downturn will likely be deeper than anything you or your advisor has ever experienced.
Does your financial advisor tell you that markets recover in the long run? Do they tell you not to worry? You need to heed that uneasy feeling of yours. As De Goey makes clear, advisors, like all of us, suffer from unconscious bias, but their sunny outlook is also the product of industry-wide groupthink.