Which Mug Won?

The bigger mug which I bought recently. On November 9 when I last blogged about it, I explained my disappointment with the bigger mug but each time I had chosen it over the better purple one. We humans are so paradoxical. This experience is completely consistent with what I had come across many times in various articles and books in behavioral finance especially Daniel Kaheman's latest book.

We are not capable of making the best choice. All these tell me that investors can only make money by losing some money, but one must always hate losing money. Most people actually don't hate it enough especially when they are excited about the upside.

We don't know ourselves except by experience and often that is not good enough. We waste time getting lost because too many of us were prepared to deny the opportunities to discover ourselves in order to achieve wealth, status and power. We are prideful and refused to admit it. All these are quickly tested when one begins to trade of invest in the markets. Most will fail and those who succeed most of them will fail later. They were lucky then.

In the end the superior purple mug does its job very well keeping liquids hot or cold whichever is preferred but was too small and inconvenient to use. The inferior bigger mug turned out to be good enough. Now if I want to stand a mug beside me for hours while I read, I would use the purple mug. That would be a rare luxury.