Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Retirement Unlocked with Larry Heller, your life Your Way, unlimited possibilities. Join us as we explore how tailored financial planning and investments can help you navigate life transitions with confidence. Let’s dive into this week’s episode.

[00:00:20] Bill Tucker: And welcome back to Retirement Unlocked with your host, Larry Heller.

Joining us today is Scott Bosworth, CFA, head of the Speakers Bureau and Vice President at Dimensional Fund Advisors headquartered in Austin, Texas. Scott has been with Dimensional since 1996 and brings decades of experience as a portfolio manager. Institutional and advisory consultant and leader of the firm’s most complex advisory relationships.

In this episode, we dive into the psychology of investing. We explore the behavioral biases that investors should be most aware of. Scott also share some practical framework and stories that [00:01:00] help explain why understanding investor behavior is so critical to long-term success. If you’ve ever wondered why investing feels harder than it should, or how decisions can come from understanding how we think, this is a podcast you do not want to miss.

And with that, hello Larry. Hi, bill. How are you? I’m great, thanks. I’m great. I’m looking forward to this conversation. I always like hearing about the psychology, about the behavioral biases that we as investors bring to the entire process that we most of the time are not aware of.

[00:01:39] Larry Heller: Now we got the expert right here to talk about that.

Excellent. So Scott, thanks for joining us today. I’m really looking forward to this. And you mentioned 1996. I think we know each other almost as long as that without giving away. Yeah, it’s been a while. It’s been, it’s it’s been a while. So, uh, why don’t we kick it off? ’cause I think our listeners are gonna love this [00:02:00] topic.

And, um, for those that are not familiar, why don’t we just start right at the beginning and kind of what is behavioral finance and why should someone be interested in this?

[00:02:09] Scott Bosworth: Yeah, so behavioral finance is a field of study that was sort of born out of behavioral economics, which really was born out itself from just this idea of how people make decisions when faced with uncertainty.

Um, it really goes back to the, the. The, the official academic research into it goes back to the sixties and seventies. Uh, gentleman by the name of Con, uh, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Dki were sort of the pioneers in the field, but it really had to do with a, all these mental shortcuts we make to sort of simplify our lives and simplify decision making and sort of like just being human.

Uh. What they began to uncover were how these shortcuts, while they’re very useful in regular everyday life, in, in lots of aspects of, of being a human in a society, they lead to what [00:03:00] they called severe and sys sometimes severe and systematic errors in decision making, um, when faced with, you know, areas of uncertainty.

And of course being an investor, we’re in a stock market or a bond market globally, you know that that’s. Kinda the definition of an uncertain environment, which is why sort of the, the birth of behavioral economics, the birth of behavioral finance, to really start to dig into this stuff as it relates to investing specifically.

[00:03:29] Larry Heller: And I guess this even comes more into play when we ha kind of have years that the market is way up, and especially those years that a market is way down, which we’ll talk about. But, um, how long have you been studying investor behavior and what got you interested in this originally?

[00:03:44] Scott Bosworth: Well, I, so I’ve been with the firm for almost 30 years and, you know, very academic based firm, but mostly sort of on the evidence.

Of how markets work. So around the global financial crisis, probably a few years before that. ’cause you know, as you remember, [00:04:00] Larry, just a few years before the global financial crisis in oh eight, you know, we had the, the sort of the tech bubble and burst of 2000, 2001 and 2002. So, coming outta that, I started reading a little bit in it.

It was a very much a, a minor hobby of mine. Um, but. In 2008, I had an advisor approach me, actually it was in early 2009, and if you remember, we were 2009, ended up being a great year in the markets, but we didn’t know that in the first, in the first few weeks. And an advisor approached me and said, you know, Scott, I know the right answer.

I know what to tell my clients, but this whole just. Be patient and wait it out and stay in your seat is getting a little bit long in the tooth. You know? Do you have anything else that maybe appeals more to the emotional side of investing and at that point in time, you know, we really didn’t have that much.

So I, you know, took it upon myself to create a presentation. I read some books. Um, there was a great one in that came out actually in 2008. By a columnist at the Wall Street Journal named Jason Ze. Jason, [00:05:00] uh, and it was called Your Money And Your Brain. So that was the first book I read, I read on the subject.

I found it fascinating kind of off I went. And so for the last. You know, 15 plus years I’ve been doing presentations and, uh, and other sorts of events. Um, talking about investor psychology.

[00:05:16] Larry Heller: Hmm.

[00:05:17] Scott Bosworth: So I,

[00:05:18] Larry Heller: I know there are a lot of different biases that are out there from all this work and all this study, but what are, what are the main biases that Vestas should be most aware of?

[00:05:28] Scott Bosworth: Yeah, it’s a great, great question because if you start digging into this without any guidance, um, you know, there’s a Wikipedia page, uh, that’s, uh, that lists cognitive biases. You could look it up. There’s 245. Don’t bother counting them. I did it for you. Uh, now it’s a, it’s a number that changes because.

There. This is a very well-studied area of behavior, of, of finance now, it, it didn’t used to be. So new academics are coming up with new and clever ways of describing, you know, really nuanced [00:06:00] biases that show up in certain environments. They have clever names for them, like the Turkey illusion or the GI Joe fallacy, but, you know, you can get a little bit into the weeds with this stuff and, and I like to try.

Try to take a step back and say, okay, what, what’s happening? Why do we think the way we do? Why do we use intuition or instinct, sometimes improperly? And it’s just how we’re wired. So I, I would first caution people to avoid. Buying into the fact that this is irrational, that Jason’s week book I talked about, he has a quote, I’m gonna paraphrase it, but he, you know, and, and I think it stuck with me back in 2009 and I’ve sort of like carried it forward all these years, but he said, you know, our brains have a way of, of making investment decisions that are, that are without any logic, but they’re very, they make a lot of sense emotionally.

He says, and he says, and this is the key sentence that doesn’t make us irrational. It makes us human. And I really, I leaned into that sort of concept [00:07:00] that this isn’t irrational. In other words, if you could cure yourself of these biases by taking a pill or taking a class, you probably wouldn’t want to, because while it might make you a much more.

Like solid investor and you’d be able to com completely ignore all the emotional side of things. It might make you a, a very difficult human being to, to be around. I, I think it, you know, I think Buffet said, you know, a really good investor has to have some element of, of. Um, you know, of social anxiety or, or sort of introversion.

So, you know, you, but the good news, uh, I shouldn’t say the good news, but the, the truth is you cannot cure yourself of, of what these, what these biases are doing. ’cause it’s how we’re wired and we’re wired that way for really good reasons. It goes back to survival instinct, and it goes back to what the, what the academics call these psychological defenses.

So what are those, those are defenses that, you know, when we make a mistake. We don’t beat [00:08:00] ourselves up too much because we have psychological defenses that sort of make us feel better about the mistakes we make. They make us feel better about the situations we’re in that we can’t control. It’s, it’s not necessarily helpful, um, in a logical way, but it’s very helpful in an emotional way to keep us from, you know, sort of like getting into despair.

[00:08:20] Larry Heller: Hmm. So if you know that there are these biases out there and you know that you have some of them, how do you kind of, you know, work on that so you don’t make an irrational decision at an inopportune time?

[00:08:34] Scott Bosworth: Well, awareness is the first step, right? Mm-hmm. So just being aware that these exist, but it’s, um, it’s been well documented.

It’s actually the, the, the one I mentioned earlier, the GI Joe fallacy is actually a, a named bias. That, that essentially is about biases. It’s saying, knowing these things is not half the battle. It’s, it’s a very small part of the battle and the. Problem. What, what’s come up in research over the years is that [00:09:00] it’s really easy to see this sort of in an abstract way.

It’s really easy to see this in other people, but it’s very difficult in the moment. To know that you’re making a, a decision that has suboptimal expectation because at the, at the moment, it feels good emotionally. You know, maybe the, the, the classic example would be someone who’s, who’s hearing nothing but bad news in the economy and in politics and is convinced, has convinced themselves that the market is gonna crash eminently.

And so that emotional decision might be to, you know, take a lot of risk off the table to change their portfolio in the face of that anxiety. We know from. Academic research, it’s very unlikely you’re going to get that trade right.

[00:09:42] Larry Heller: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:42] Scott Bosworth: Um, you’ve seen it, Larry. I’ve seen it for 30 years. It’s, it’s, it’s all over the place.

Um, I would even argue the worst thing that can happen to an investor is they do get it right the first time because then that feeds. What is probably the number one bias in all of academic literature, [00:10:00] and that’s the overconfidence bias, right? We all think we’re a little bit, well, I shouldn’t say we all, I mean, a, any blanket statement like that is, is bound to be wrong, but on average, people tend to be overconfident.

You may think, well, no, I’m not like that. You know, but I know, I know. My, my brother-in-law here is like, there’s always that ability to see it in other people, uh, and an inability to see it in yourselves. There’s nothing wrong with being overconfident. Overconfidence drives a lot of innovation. It allows us to take risks.

It allows us to sort of advance society. There’s a lot of good reasons. Also, overconfidence, you know, having a little bit more confidence than is deserved does make you feel better. You, you sort of have the ability to try a little bit harder and you, you can see the emotional benefit of it. But there’s a great quote, um, from years ago, a guy named Charlie Munger, who many of you may know, he was, uh, Warren Buffet’s right hand man.

He passed away recently. Uh, sadly, but, you know, had a great, had a great life. He’s 95, he love to say. What’s that? I think he [00:11:00] was 95 and he was, yeah. Yeah. So we should all be so lucky, right? Yep, yep. Um, also, also, you know, did very well at Berkshire Hathaway, of course, but he used to say about overconfidence.

He said, you know, it’s the strong swimmers who drown. Now that’s a, that’s a acute quote. Maybe not cute. Mm-hmm. But maybe sort of a dark quote. But his point is, if you think you’re really good at something, you’re, you’re liable to take more risk and, uh, present more. Opportunities, if you will, for catastrophe.

So when you think about investing, if you think you know how to time markets or how to time, uh, your participation in individual securities, you’re probably gonna take more risk. That may pay off, but the probabilities are not in your favor, right? The odds are those types of concentrated or timing bets are more likely gonna.

Cost you more money than they’re gonna save you or, or make you. So that’s just one example of how overconfidence, you know, the awareness to remind yourself that, [00:12:00] hey, it’s, I’m not gonna try to cure myself of my confidence, but I’m gonna make sure I, I know when it might be. Might be picking up. Easier said than done.

[00:12:09] Larry Heller: Yeah. I mean, some of those kind of behavioral, um, irrational ones. We’ve had a few relatively new clients in the beginning of the year. They were like. Uh, you know, I listened to so and so and who thinks there’s gonna be a major correction? Can we just like reduce our equity exposure by Oh, get out and I’ll just wait until that happens and then I’ll get back, get back in.

So, uh, usually the, you know, clients have been with us for a long time, have seen the ups and downs, and so they’ve kind of got that, uh, out of their head and, and I can deal with some of those. Kind of, um, mental type of, uh, behaviors, but you still, even, even after all these years, I’m still hearing that. So, uh, I don’t know your thoughts on, on, on that and, and maybe there’s a bias from the, the media out there.[00:13:00]

[00:13:01] Scott Bosworth: Well, I, I would argue there probably is a, be a, a media bias. I think, um, you know. Alarming headlines and articles are certainly, you know, more click worthy than articles that say, actually, it doesn’t really matter what the news is, just relax and, you know, go, go work on your handicap or your tan, or learn how to play pickleball, right?

I mean, that’s, I think most, most people are not able to take that advice because the media does not reinforce. A, a patient long-term approach. Um, but it’s not the media’s fault because the media is being asked to do something, which is they, they’re being asked to provide news on a daily basis, which is tough to do.

Um, they also know they’re gonna follow the readership, they’re gonna follow the clicks, if you will. Mm-hmm. And, you know, those sensational articles probably get more attention than the more sort of, uh, you know, subdued articles that, that tell you, tune out all this stuff ’cause it doesn’t matter. Um. You know, I, this brings up something for me [00:14:00] about, about this idea.

We often refer to this thing called the market all the time. It’s, it’s almost like it’s got its own consciousness or it’s being controlled like a, like a Wizard of Oz, puppet master. Mm-hmm. But it’s, I think it’s important for everybody to remember. The market is never right or wrong. The market is a weighing machine of everybody, all of us collectively.

Mm-hmm. With our different opinions, our different levels of knowledge, our different emotions. All of that stuff is weighing the price of everything all the time. So if it’s traded on a public exchange, like a stock or a bond, um, those things, that, that’s the right price, because that’s the price today mm-hmm.

That people are willing to transact at. There’s no sort of secret star society in some boardroom somewhere that’s setting these prices and, and it’s rigged or gained. So when someone says, you know. I’m nervous. I hear nothing but bad news. I think the market is overpriced. What they’re really saying is, I’m disagreeing with the collective [00:15:00] wisdom and experience and emotions of everybody else, and they might end up being right, but they might end up being right later.

Right. It’s like, you know, you have these people in the media who are constantly bearish, right? They’re like. Everything’s always, the sky’s always falling. Mm-hmm. And you know, it, it might be falling for years before it actually falls. So this idea of trying to time that is really a fool’s game. What you wanna do is have a, have the right level of risk in your portfolio that you can afford to, you know, I like to say it’s not about avoiding the storms on the journey, it’s about surviving the storms on the journey.

You know, if you try to avoid ’em, you’re gonna end up detouring and it’s gonna take you a lot longer to reach your goals. If you just have the right vehicle or portfolio to survive those storms, it’s robust enough. You’ve got diversification, you’re controlling things like costs and taxes, and you’ve got a really good captain and crew, and that’s where the advisory comes in.

It’s really hard to [00:16:00] do this by yourself. A few people can do it. But the evidence suggests that most people benefit greatly from having, uh, an objective third party professional managing all of the elements of wealth management. I mean, investment portfolios is just one small part of the things that, that you all do.

[00:16:18] Larry Heller: Yeah, no, I love that theory riding out the, the riding out the storm. Um, and really, you know, kind of what we are we are doing is trying to have them prepared. I mean, for our retired clients that have. Distributions and having enough cash, um, to ride out the storm over a couple year period in case we have one of those 2008.

But you know, having those communications on those conversations help alleviate some of those behaviors. When we do have a, uh, a, a downturn. Um, and speaking about, you know, you know, the, the market, the theories of an efficient market and behavioral finance seem to be at odds. Um, you know, we’ve talked about kind of yeah.

Different ways of [00:17:00] thinking about those two. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

[00:17:03] Scott Bosworth: Yeah, well, I happen to be, be in a, in a good seat. I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m close to one of the, one of one half of, of the, of that debate, which is Gene Fama. He’s considered largely to be the, the sort of the father of the efficient markets, uh, camp, if you will.

And that’s this camp that says, look, markets are really tough to beat because they incorporate all this information so quickly and they adjust to new information very quickly. So very difficult to out guess. Um, along comes behavioral finance, you know, maybe a couple of decades later that has gained a lot of traction.

And I think originally behavioral finance was viewed as, um, sort of a, um, an update to how to approach investing in the markets. It said the efficient market theory clearly isn’t right, because we’ve learned all this stuff about how irrational, uh, investors’ decisions are. Um, and. I take a different approach to that.

I, I still think Efficient Markets is the only [00:18:00] model that works really well to help us build portfolios around costs. Diversification, flexibility, expected returns, all that stuff we’ve learned from kind of the empirical evidence. And what behavioral finance does is it tells us how to behave with that portfolio.

So they, they really are both critical. And the analogy I like to give is, you know, I, I use the analogy of, of, of a ship that weathers the storm. Well, to kind of continue with that journey metaphor I’m talking about like, you know, building a car. For a journey. That journey being your investment. Investment lifetime, your investment journey, you know, you wanna have the right car.

And I think Efficient markets helps us build the right car for each individual investor. What behavioral finance does is it tells us how to drive the car. Mm-hmm. Because you gotta have both, right? Right. If you have the wrong vehicle, that’s not gonna work. If you have the right vehicle. You keep taking detours or running outta gas or getting flat tires, like that’s not gonna work [00:19:00] either.

And I think when you come to the realization that both of these things are super important and one does not cancel the other out. Um, and look, gene Fama and, and, and Richard Thaylor, they’re both at the University of Chicago, they’re actually colleagues. They get along well. I think back in the day they used to play tennis together.

Hmm. They’re the, they’re the competing. Sort of Nobel Prize winners of their respective fields. And even they, at the end of the. Um, debates that they might have on it. Kind of agree that, you know, this doesn’t, behavioral finance doesn’t really tell you much about how to build a better portfolio. What it does tell you is how to manage your investment journey, and I think that’s a really important insight for people to take away.

[00:19:42] Larry Heller: Yeah. And, and not only managing the, the, the journey, it’s really the communication. Um, and, and just really having those communications. I think we had one client, we were talking about this and talking about the ups and downs. That’s one of these years we’re gonna get together, do your review, and you’re gonna be down.

I think it was like five straight years he was up. So, you know, so, but [00:20:00] trying to have those communications together, so when you go through these timeframes. I mean, I just remember in 2008 having some of the, you know, the calls during the toughest time pain with people going through pain and significant losses, and people would just, I just wanna stop the bleeding.

So really, if you can really start to educate them about the markets and about how it works and staying the, the journey, that’s kind of what, you know, we are there for, to hold their hand in those particular times and not make an irrational decision. So, uh, so planning ahead and, and knowing about this thing, I think is so, so critical.

Uh, Scott, are there, uh, some other particular stories or frameworks you find useful in trying to explain this area of study?

[00:20:47] Scott Bosworth: And I, I, I mentioned specifically, you know, overconfidence is this, you know, sort of underlying bias that drives a lot of this other stuff. But there’s, you know, if you, if you, if you do go to that Wikipedia page and start, you know, [00:21:00] combing through the.

The close to 250 biases. I would say there’s a few that, for me, are particularly relevant and salient for investors. And it’s, you know, there’s um, there’s the illusion of control, there’s loss aversion, there’s hindsight bias. I’ll, I’ll stop on hindsight bias for a second because this is an interesting one and I think what it, what it basically, and it unpacks a lot of other, um, sort of tangents, but you know, there’s an old saying about hindsight, Larry, I’m gonna.

I’m gonna quiz you. What’s the old saying about hindsight? The old quip? Hindsight is 2020.

[00:21:34] Larry Heller: I’m not sure. Hindsight

[00:21:35] Scott Bosworth: is 2020. Okay. We didn’t prep that, so I, you know, I, I appreciate you playing along. Okay. Hindsight’s 2020. Now why do we say that? Because we have perfect clarity about what happened. Here’s what our brains do, and this is really fascinating and this has been studied, um, quite a bit by Kah Anderski and dozens and dozens of other academics, is that when we look back at an event like the global financial crisis or like [00:22:00] the.com or you know, even things outside of the investment realm, we often, what our brains do is they, they look at that and they go, oh, I should have seen that coming.

It seems so obvious now, and that’s damaging and, uh. Sort of insidious because what it does to our brains is it makes us think the next thing should be more predictable than it actually is. So we then spend all this energy, emotional and monetary and, and just time trying to predict that next thing. That we should have seen coming and the, the psychologists find this fascinating.

So it’s, it results in a lot of things. Hindsight bias is this bias that because the past seemed obvious, the future is, is more predictable than it is and it ends up, uh. I, I read this book a few years back by a, a, a former poker player named Annie Duke. And Annie now consults to Fortune 500 companies.

She’s like a strategic consultant for [00:23:00] boardrooms, but she wrote about hindsight bias in her book thinking, uh, sorry. Thinking in bets. I was gonna say Thinking Fast and Slow, which is Kahneman’s book, but her book Thinking, thinking in Bets talked about hindsight bias, and she, she introduced a concept to me from psychology that I was not.

Aware of before and it was called resulting. And what resulting is, it’s something I see a lot, Larry, I’m sure you do too, in, in your, you know, your. Your, uh, clients and the industry resulting is this, is this idea of because I got a bad outcome, I’m now questioning my, the decision I made that that led to that outcome.

Mm-hmm. And so now going forward, I’m gonna make a different decision because I didn’t like the outcome. So an example would be, maybe in the last few years, the US stock market has outperformed. Most other global stock markets mm-hmm. Depending on what, you know, start and end date you want to use. That wasn’t true in 2025, but, you know, that was, um, that was, that has been true for most of the past, say eight to 10 years.

Mm-hmm. [00:24:00] So someone might say or think, you know, I live in the us, I consume in the us, why do I have all these global stocks? Shouldn’t I just be investing in the US because I would’ve had a much better return had I just focused my investments in the us. That is. To a T. This bias of resulting, you made the right decision by being globally diversified.

We didn’t know what the outcome was gonna be over that period of time, and we don’t know what the outcome’s gonna be going forward. I’m not suggesting that people say, oh. Now you’re saying the US is overvalued and I should pare it back. No, no, no, no. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying the diversified, you know, plan worked then and works now for what we don’t know is going to happen going forward.

And that’s, you know, look, we don’t know where Lightning’s gonna strike and I like to remind people, even if you stay globally diversified, which I believe is the right answer, and the US continues to outperform other [00:25:00] markets. Over a long period of time, that’s actually not gonna be a bad result for you.

Right? The, the global diversification is still a good idea, even if this US dominance continues. 2025, we saw, uh, non-US markets, I think outperform US markets depending on how you measure it, by roughly, uh, a factor of two to one. So that was nice to see. But that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t prove anybody right or wrong.

It just says, Hey, global diversification is there for a reason. Let’s not question that decision because we got a bad, you know, bad luck of the draw, if you will.

[00:25:35] Larry Heller: Yeah, yeah. I’ve been talking to, actually talked to my son, talked to some other young people who were saying, w why don’t I just put everything in the s and p 500, you know, the us the US market?

And they said, well, that’s what Warren Buffet said. If you young just kind of do this. And they’re looking at those numbers. Yeah. Th this year, uh, 2025 International had had a, a nice, nice year, but you know, the last few years people are like. Why do I have to [00:26:00] be in that? So it’s hard to kind of look at the evidence base, the long-term efficient markets, and be diversified like we do, and explain those type of situ situations because it, it is really a bias.

But then I try to talk to them about the, you know, the lost decade, 1990 to 2000 where the SB 500 was just down a smidgen and they’re like, looking at you because they didn’t live through that. It’s like, really? Can that really, really happen? So, uh, yeah. So it it is some interesting conversations to have.

[00:26:31] Scott Bosworth: No, I agree. Look, I mean, I think the lost decade was 2000 to 2009. Right. And I remember it really well. It, it, it was bookended by the, you had the.com in the beginning. You had the global financial crisis near the end. Um, I think a globally diversified portfolio did much better than a US based portfolio for that 10 year period.

So that’s to your point, but. You know, I look at it like this, some country or some region has to be the best performer. I mean, that’s just how markets work, right? You know, when you rank them [00:27:00] all after some period of time, there’s gonna be a number one country and there’s gonna be a a, a last country. And I don’t know what that’s gonna be going forward.

So, um, you know, the fact that over the last. X number of years, the US was either number one or or close to the top. That doesn’t mean that’s gonna repeat, but it also doesn’t mean that that was something I should have seen coming and should have done something about. As a US investor, I benefited from that way more than I would’ve had I been a European investor or an Australian investor or an investor in Japan, right?

Because they’re probably gonna have a lot more of their assets in their home country and their home country turned out to not be the country. That outperformed all the others. So, you know, there’s a perspective issue that I think we, we often lose sight of. Um, I’m a huge fan of diversification. I think it was, you know, Merton Miller or somebody before him that said, you know, diversification, uh, is the only free lunch.

In investing, you [00:28:00] should eat of as much of it as you can. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause it’s, it’s really now, maybe back in the sixties and seventies, it wasn’t that easy to be globally diversified. Today you’ve got no excuse. It’s really inexpensive to have a, a globally diversified portfolio that covers all the countries.

Tens of thousands of of securities stocks and bonds and get the right balance that you can stick with, get the, get the vehicle that’s gonna survive, that, that journey survive. Those storms that are inev inevitably gonna come and you don’t have to make any decisions. Well, let me rephrase that. You do have to make a decision routinely, and that is to not change anything.

Some people think of that as inaction or, you know, sort of like un-American or something, but really you’re making a very, um, a, a decision of fortitude, of great fortitude to stay the course in the face of really good markets. When you might have some little FOMO creeping in, like gold or cryptocurrency mm-hmm.

Or Nvidia or you might have periods where it’s, it’s anxiety because you’re, ’cause the market is going down, [00:29:00] rebalance. Keep that, keep that ship robust and, and keep that long-term perspective. Again, it’s easy to say, it’s harder to do. And Larry, I, I like to remind people, just because I’ve been a dimensional for 30 years, just because I’ve been studying this my whole career doesn’t mean I don’t have those hunches too.

If those emotions come up, I read the same mm-hmm. Articles that all your clients are reading and all my clients are reading, and I get those hunches. Mm-hmm. But, you know, heaven forbid we would invest anybody’s life savings based on my, my emotions and hunches. Right.

[00:29:33] Larry Heller: Uh, Scott, this has been great. I can talk, talk about this topic’s fascinating for a long time.

Um, thank you for joining us today. Um, I, I appreciate all, appreciate all the time and everything that you do at Dimensional, so hopefully our li listeners out there got a little bit of a benefit and help on kind of all these biases and rational behavior and, and how to maybe minimize some of their emotional decisions.

So thanks again, Scott.

[00:29:58] Scott Bosworth: Yeah, Larry, thanks for [00:30:00] having me on. Great to see you and appreciate it.

[00:30:02] Bill Tucker: And I, before I close this out, Larry, I just have to jump in here. As a former financial news reporter i’s spent several decades covering business and financial news markets. I wanna go back to something you said, Scott.

Actually, business and financial news is not tasked with delivering information. Business and financial news is tasked with delivering eyeballs. They want viewers. Information is incidental to that. So the information, what information’s gonna drive it the most? The headline of the, the house is on fire or the house is.

Okay.

[00:30:37] Scott Bosworth: That’s pretty well put.

[00:30:40] Bill Tucker: But thanks, that was a fascinating conversation and really, really interesting. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks Bill. And as always, Larry, another. Excellent podcast. Thank you so much.

[00:30:52] Larry Heller: Ah, great. My pleasure.

[00:30:53] Bill Tucker: And no. And li and listeners, thank you for joining us on Retirement Unlocked.

If this episode has helped you better understand how [00:31:00] investor behavior and biases influence financial decisions, be sure to like, subscribe and share it with someone who wants to be a little smarter and maybe a little more confident in their investment choices. Wanna make your investment strategy. Make sure it’s aligned not just with the markets, but how you actually think of behavior as an investor.

Check the episode description for a link to Heller Wealth Management, where you will find additional resources and the option to schedule a complimentary 20 minute call with our team. Better investing starts with better decisions, and those decisions start with understanding behavior. Thanks for joining us.

We’ll see you next time.