This is what I found interesting from the current issue of the “The Economist” (July 19th 2008).

“When the person at the top of the pyramid is uncertain,, when there are benefits and costs of both choices, then he or she will feel a particular urgency to justify the choice made. But by the time the person is at the bottom of the pyramid, ambivalence will have morphed into certainty, and he or she will be miles away from anyone who took a different route.”

People involved in markets do not seem to learn from past episodes.

“The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions-especially the wrong ones-is an unpleasant feeling that Festinger called “cognitive disso¬nance”.

A self-destructive company habit.

Lowering risk enhances returns.

A value investor’s principles of success.

This is what I found interesting from the current issue of the “The Economist” (July 12th 2008).

Reasoning mistakes about inverse probabilities run rampant.

Who is the better persuader?