Are individual investors equipped to make basic financial decisions?

In discussions of finance and investment, it is routine to see disclaimers such as “may lose value,” and “past performance is no indication of future results.”

However, as we have pointed out in our paper Financial charlatanism: The effects of backtest overfitting on out-of-sample performance, even this may be a bit optimistic, as certain investment strategies, marketed to the public as money-winning, actually might be pretty much guaranteed to be money-losing, particularly when fees and other expenses are considered.

These considerations raise the question: Are individual investors equipped to make the sorts of financial decisions that increasingly are required of

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What Wittgenstein can teach all of us about investing

It is not often that one hears the name of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) mentioned in an investment forum.  Perhaps it is because the great Anglo-Austrian positivist philosopher gave away his entire inheritance at the age of 30. Quite a brave thing to do, having been born into one of Europe’s wealthiest families, with a fortune comparable to that of the Rothschilds.

You see, Ludwig wanted a do-it-yourself life, he wanted to achieve something based on his own merit. Three of his brothers committed suicide, and poverty probably saved his life and mind (“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”).

By his

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