I put two questions in Google about stocks and came up with these results:
1."Stocks. 'I made a lot of money'" = 958,000 hits.
2."Stocks. 'I lost a lot of money'" = 4,840,000 hits.
I am surprised at the results because the long-term trend of stocks has been UP (harder to lose money) and also I was under the impression that winners brag and losers tend to remain quiet.
I would appreciate your thoughts?
Thank you and best wishes.
Taylor
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." -- Jack Bogle
Recency bias? Many people are still smarting from the 2008-2009 sell off, and many sold out at or near the bottom.
I'll bet in 1999 the search would have turned out the opposite, when "everyone" was making money in tech stocks and "everyone" was a genius stock picker.
I put two questions in Google about stocks and came up with these results:
1."Stocks. 'I made a lot of money'" = 958,000 hits.
2."Stocks. 'I lost a lot of money'" = 4,840,000 hits.
Group 1 invested in index funds.
Group 2 chose individual stocks.
I typed cheese_breath and got 72,400 hits. But the results are bogus because Google removed the underscore between cheese and breath. Then I put quotes around cheese_breath and reduced it to only 48,900 hits. Google still removed the underscore, but somehow I got less hits. I didn't examine them all to discover what made the difference.
The surest way to know the future is when it becomes the past.
I typed cheese_breath and got 72,400 hits. But the results are bogus because Google removed the underscore between cheese and breath. Then I put quotes around cheese_breath and reduced it to only 48,900 hits. Google still removed the underscore, but somehow I got less hits. I didn't examine them all to discover what made the difference.
I tried "Boglenaut" and got 46,500 hits, the most interesting one of which was that I am currently in 10th place in the 2014 Boglehead stock prediction contest.
"Dow rose" (in quotation marks)--128,000 "Dow fell" i(in quotation marks)--138,000
"bull market" (in quotation marks)--4,790,000 "bear market" (in quotation marks)--3,170,000
"stock market went up" (in quotation marks)--392,000 "stock market went down" (in quotation marks)--273,000
My conclusion? It is all mysterious and I no idea what to make of any of it.
Meanwhile:
Gandhi--118,000,000 Ghandi--"About 211,000,000 results (0.62 seconds) Did you mean: gandhi"
Now, that is scary. If things go on like that, in ten years Ghandi will become the correct spelling.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
The bigger the numbers the curiouser it gets - what do they mean?
"Yes, investing is simple. But it is not easy, for it requires discipline, patience, steadfastness, and that most uncommon of all gifts, common sense." ~Jack Bogle
Taylor, I'm having trouble reproducing your results... exactly what did you type into the search box? That is, what punctuation marks did you use, where? Try typing exactly what you typed and then using the "underline" attribute so that it's clear what kinds of punctuation marks you actually used. I get very very weird results of I actually use any single quotatation marks (apostrophes), they must have some special meaning in Google searches
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
I put two questions in Google about stocks and came up with these results:
1."Stocks. 'I made a lot of money'" = 958,000 hits.
2."Stocks. 'I lost a lot of money'" = 4,840,000 hits.
I am surprised at the results because the long-term trend of stocks has been UP (harder to lose money) and also I was under the impression that winners brag and losers tend to remain quiet.
I would appreciate your thoughts?
Thank you and best wishes.
Taylor
Taylor,
This was a great, simple experiment again proving that stock returns and investor returns do not go hand in hand. The delta would be explained by active management (security selection and market timing). The interesting thing is it would seem "lost a lot of money" is A LOT more then Dalbar studies would indicate, no??
Maybe there is a selection bias of those using the internet more (young folks) who are usually more brash and active in investing thus leading to more losses??
Since we know those who are more educated do WORSE in investing, ?Odean/ Barber study, it may apply to those who research more about investing do worse? That would be an interesting finding wouldn't it? The more one researches/ reads about investing the more one starts to believe in some active management technique.
Personally, I like to read about different techniques in investing just to see if I can find something better/ predictable then passive investing, but sadly I come back to bogleheads as I have not seen ANY reproducible data to support more active investing. I do admit though I have found a few techniques that I have tried backtesting that was close, but not much better then just using index funds and throwing x amount of each paycheck into each month until I retire!!
Good luck.
"The stock market [fluctuation], therefore, is noise. A giant distraction from the business of investing.” |
-Jack Bogle
I put two questions in Google about stocks and came up with these results:
1."Stocks. 'I made a lot of money'" = 958,000 hits.
2."Stocks. 'I lost a lot of money'" = 4,840,000 hits.
I am surprised at the results because the long-term trend of stocks has been UP (harder to lose money) and also I was under the impression that winners brag and losers tend to remain quiet.
I would appreciate your thoughts?
Thank you and best wishes.
Taylor
Great post!
Much to my dismay, I have more experience with #2.....BUT.....that was BEFORE I found this forum!
Thanks to you Taylor and all the posters for all your information and insights!
Happy "Investing" to everyone
Don
cheese_breath wrote:
I typed cheese_breath and got 72,400 hits. But the results are bogus because Google removed the underscore between cheese and breath. Then I put quotes around cheese_breath and reduced it to only 48,900 hits. Google still removed the underscore, but somehow I got less hits. I didn't examine them all to discover what made the difference.
I got 580,000, underscore intact. 22 million if the underscore was removed. So I'm kinda confused about what you did.
Taylor, I'm having trouble reproducing your results... exactly what did you type into the search box? That is, what punctuation marks did you use, where? Try typing exactly what you typed and then using the "underline" attribute so that it's clear what kinds of punctuation marks you actually used.
AJ and Nisiprious:
Not positive, but I think I put in these words and punctuation's in my two Google searches:
First search: Stocks. "I made a lot of money"
Second search: Stocks. "I lost a lot of money"
Best wishes.
Taylor
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." -- Jack Bogle
People remember negative experiences longer and are also 5-10 times more likely to share a negative experience than a positive experience. This is why companies that stay in business put such a high value on customer service, it really isn't about that individual customer, it's about the 20+ other customers they will lose if they don't make him/her happy (customer shares to 5 people, each other person shares to at least 5 people, goes downhill for them from there).
We also know that people stink at investing, they sell and buy at precisely the wrong times, so even though there has been enormous potential to grow wealth with stocks people in general fail to capitalize and wind up losing money.
I remember reading somewhere that a loss is twice as emotionally intense as a gain. Maybe these results suggest that it's actually a factor of 5?
Humans by nature are incredibly risk adverse, it insures our survival. Losing money definately triggers a much stronger reaction in the average human than gaining it. Invester pyschology is much more important than a lot of other factors in investing, even more important than ER. An invester that pays 2% ER a year but stays the course and makes good decisions will be better off than one that pays 0.15% ER but jumps in / out at of stocks at precisely the wrong time.
Taylor, I'm having trouble reproducing your results... exactly what did you type into the search box? That is, what punctuation marks did you use, where? Try typing exactly what you typed and then using the "underline" attribute so that it's clear what kinds of punctuation marks you actually used.
AJ and Nisiprious:
Not positive, but I think I put in these words and punctuation's in my two Google searches:
First search: Stocks. "I made a lot of money"
I get: 943,000 hits, about the same as you did.
Second search: Stocks. "I lost a lot of money"
But on that one, I only get 443,000 hits.
If I omit the close quote: Stocks. "I made a lot of money I get 2,840,000,000 hits. I can't find any variation that gets me in the ballpark of four million.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Taylor, I'm having trouble reproducing your results... exactly what did you type into the search box? That is, what punctuation marks did you use, where? Try typing exactly what you typed and then using the "underline" attribute so that it's clear what kinds of punctuation marks you actually used.
AJ and Nisiprious:
Not positive, but I think I put in these words and punctuation's in my two Google searches:
First search: Stocks. "I made a lot of money"
I get: 943,000 hits, about the same as you did.
Second search: Stocks. "I lost a lot of money"
But on that one, I only get 443,000 hits.
If I omit the close quote: Stocks. "I made a lot of money I get 2,840,000,000 hits. I can't find any variation that gets me in the ballpark of four million.
Nisiprius:
I repeated my "search" and also couldn't come close to the four million figure. Now I'm no longer surprised.
Thank you for catching my "search" error.
Best wishes.
Taylor
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." -- Jack Bogle
baw703916 wrote:I remember reading somewhere that a loss is twice as emotionally intense as a gain. Maybe these results suggest that it's actually a factor of 5?
Brad
Recently read Bernstein's Investor Manifesto and he has it in there. Basically you feel lot more pain losing $1 than gaining $2. It's the way brain is wired.
When the market crashes, ie 1929/2000/2008, people panick and doomsday reports are all over the news. You never hear about the steadfast BH investor who salivated at the chance for cheap stocks in 2000/2008 and stayed the course and is now retiring a multi-millionaire.
Taylor, I'm having trouble reproducing your results... I repeated my "search" and also couldn't come close to the four million figure. Now I'm no longer surprised.
Thank you for catching my "search" error.
Best wishes.
Taylor
Sorry to have been the bearer of disappointment, because it was such an interesting observation. But Google is weird. Among other things, it saves some kind of information about you, and two different people won't necessarily get the same results from the same Google search.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Taylor, I'm having trouble reproducing your results... I repeated my "search" and also couldn't come close to the four million figure. Now I'm no longer surprised.
Thank you for catching my "search" error.
Best wishes.
Taylor
Sorry to have been the bearer of disappointment, because it was such an interesting observation. But Google is weird. Among other things, it saves some kind of information about you, and two different people won't necessarily get the same results from the same Google search.
They may get a different order of results (I wouldn't have said weird though, I think it's useful). But I don't think it should affect number of results at all.
cheese_breath wrote:
I typed cheese_breath and got 72,400 hits. But the results are bogus because Google removed the underscore between cheese and breath. Then I put quotes around cheese_breath and reduced it to only 48,900 hits. Google still removed the underscore, but somehow I got less hits. I didn't examine them all to discover what made the difference.
I got 580,000, underscore intact. 22 million if the underscore was removed. So I'm kinda confused about what you did.
Maybe nisiprius has the answer.
nisiprius wrote:Sorry to have been the bearer of disappointment, because it was such an interesting observation. But Google is weird. Among other things, it saves some kind of information about you, and two different people won't necessarily get the same results from the same Google search.
The surest way to know the future is when it becomes the past.
I put two questions in Google about stocks and came up with these results:
1."Stocks. 'I made a lot of money'" = 958,000 hits.
2."Stocks. 'I lost a lot of money'" = 4,840,000 hits.
I am surprised at the results because the long-term trend of stocks has been UP (harder to lose money) and also I was under the impression that winners brag and losers tend to remain quiet.
I would appreciate your thoughts?
Thank you and best wishes.
Taylor
People are more likely to seek advice...eg go to the internet....when they panic. "I made a lot of money" is just bragging rights. "I lost a lot of money" is desperation.
I put two questions in Google about stocks and came up with these results:
1."Stocks. 'I made a lot of money'" = 958,000 hits.
2."Stocks. 'I lost a lot of money'" = 4,840,000 hits.
I am surprised at the results because the long-term trend of stocks has been UP (harder to lose money) and also I was under the impression that winners brag and losers tend to remain quiet.
I would appreciate your thoughts?
Thank you and best wishes.
Taylor
"I made a lot of money in stocks" is a common spammer's angle and most of these pages will have been filtered out of the search results.
Quickfoot wrote:We also know that people stink at investing, they sell and buy at precisely the wrong times, so even though there has been enormous potential to grow wealth with stocks people in general fail to capitalize and wind up losing money.
Logically, the more true this statement is, the easier it should be to make money investing by exploiting the failings of the masses, and the less true it is the harder it would be.
Quickfoot wrote:People remember negative experiences longer and are also 5-10 times more likely to share a negative experience than a positive experience. This is why companies that stay in business put such a high value on customer service, it really isn't about that individual customer, it's about the 20+ other customers they will lose if they don't make him/her happy (customer shares to 5 people, each other person shares to at least 5 people, goes downhill for them from there).
...
Agreed.
Back when I worked retail, there was some kind of list that showed the number of "good" phonecalls to "bad" phonecalls, and the bad ones were nearly always more numerous.
I don't know about anyone else, but if I have a positive shopping experience, I'm not going to call. I consider that "meeting expectations," which are just what they sound like: They're what's expected. A machine doesn't stop each time it finishes a job so that it can be lavished with praise. It stops when it senses something's gone wrong. Likewise, I don't expect to receive a notification of "You have performed adequately" every time I do my job properly.
I would recommend opening an incognito window (ctrl + shift + n) in chrome to get results that are not predicated on your previous search history. I believe that it should result in seeing the same results across users. As mentioned previously the results that we see can be heavily dependent on past browsing history.
EyeYield wrote:What this proves is, that like everyone else, google knows nuthin.
A couple of years back, Google Flu Trends provided an encouraging idea:
Monitoring Internet search traffic about influenza may prove to be a better way for hospital emergency rooms to prepare for a surge in sick patients compared to waiting for outdated government flu case reports.