Overcoming Cognitive Biases: A Heuristic for Making Value Investing Decisions

August 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Overcoming Cognitive Biases: A Heuristic for Making Value Investing Decisions

Eben Otuteye University of New Brunswick – Fredericton – Faculty of Business

Mohammad Siddiquee Faculty of Business, University of New Brunswick, Saint John

April 26, 2013
Forthcoming in the Journal of Behavioral Finance

Abstract: 
Investment decisions are subject to error due to cognitive biases of the decision makers. One method for preventing cognitive biases from influencing decisions is to specify the algorithm for the decision in advance and to apply it dispassionately. Heuristics are useful practical tools for simplifying decision making in a complex environment due to uncertainty, limited information and bounded rationality. We develop a simple heuristic for making value investing decisions based on profitability, financial stability, susceptibility to bankruptcy, and margin of safety. This achieves two goals. First, it simplifies the decision making process without compromising quality and secondly it enables the decision maker to avoid potential cognitive bias problems.

Filed under Research

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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