No, it's not very complimentary, even if true: A former Goldman Sachs trader calls it a "lizard" brain, a French marketing guru generalizes it's your "reptilian" brain and up at Harvard there's a wise-guy professor who refers to the investor's primary decision-making tool in even less flattering terms -- "Rat" brain!
Yes, you heard right: Your brain is handicapped, a saboteur costing you big money. In "Mean Markets & Lizard Brains," former Goldman trader Terry Burnham says our primitive brain was designed to help our ancestors hunt for food, daily survival stuff.
But "by its very nature, investing requires us to be forward-looking, to anticipate events. Our lizard brains, however, are designed to look backward. Thus, the lizard brain causes us to be optimistic at market peaks (after rises) and to be pessimistic at market bottoms (after falls)." So whether it's optimism or pessimism, greed or fear, emotions do our trading, not reasoning.
5. Do not open your mutual fund statements
Actually Terry's talking about turning off cable TV, ignoring all news. By the time you get the news, it's too late, there's no trading value. Worse yet, your lizard-rat brain will make the mistake of reading something into random news, compounding your mistakes.
