Sometime around 2000, I gambled some of my money away while fooling myself into thinking I was doing something very sophisticated. I wasn’t in Las Vegas: I was sitting at my computer buying shares of Krispy Kreme Donuts on eTrade. I had seen the front page of Forbes or Fortune or some other publication touting the company’s success and its future prospects, and decided on my own, without seeking the counsel of my wiser …
The phenomenon of the “sunk-cost” bias or fallacy is often discussed in the context of investing behaviors to refer to a mindset where we hang on to a perpetually under-performing investment as a result of our attachment to and focus upon the amount we paid for it. Our brain instinctively focuses not on the stock’s objective performance over time, but instead anchors the perception of value around the amount originally paid for the investment. …