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    Why investors underestimate risks when they are in control while investing

    Synopsis

    Most people don’t know enough to be dabbling in stocks. Yet they do so because they have a lot of information which makes them believe they are in control of the situation.

    coillusionGetty Images
    People feel they are in control of a situation because they are in possession of some facts, when the reality is very different.
    By Dhirendra Kumar

    Isn’t it strange that investors worry about things that they cannot control while ignoring things that they actually can? Can you influence interest rates? No, you can’t. Can you control which stocks you will buy and at what price? Of course you can.

    Some time ago, I read an interesting article by an American security expert named Bruce Schneier. Schneier is a cryptographer and computer security specialist who has evolved into a thinker and writer about all kinds of risks and security. I find it very interesting that some of his ideas about risk and human reactions to it have great relevance to the realm of investing.

    What I read about has to do with something he calls ‘Control Bias’. Essentially, he says we tend to underestimate risks in situations where we are in control, and overestimate risks in situations when we are not in control. The most common example is the fear of flying versus the perception of risk while driving. There’s clear evidence that flying in a commercial airliner is by far the safest mode of transport that there is. In contrast, Indian roads are quite unsafe. Yet, many sensible people have a deep fear of flying but are quite unconcerned about their safety while driving.

    Worse, people take slippages in risk levels on the road unthinkingly. They chat or type on their phones while driving and even two-wheeler riders WhatsApp while riding; they drive after having a few drinks; they drive when they know their brakes or tyres are not good; they overtake while turning and so on. Yet, they are scared of flying. All these could be examples of Control Bias. When we are doing something ourselves, we suffer from an illusion of control. We underestimate risk because we are in possession of all the facts and we feel that we can control the situation when in reality we can’t. When flying, we really don’t know what’s happening so we do not have the illusion of control.

    I find that this illusion of control is exactly what make people underestimate risk while investing. It is a fact that most people don’t know enough to be dabbling in stocks. Yet they do so because they have a large amount of information which makes them believe that they know enough to be in control of the situation. Someone sells investors a story about why a stock will do well and the story appears to have enough information to give an adequate illusion of control to prospective investors.

    This is also the reason why many genuinely knowledgeable equity investors advise newcomers against investing in mutual funds. These people have enough information about stocks but feel inadequately informed about what is going on with their money in a mutual fund. The mutual fund investment manager is like a pilot and you don’t know what he’s doing on the deck.

    Unfortunately, investing also has its equivalent of driving drunk or without good brakes and tyres. Almost no individual stock investor follows any systematic risk-control on their portfolio. They don’t diversify properly. They allow their portfolio to have odd concentrations in one or two stocks or sectors and they don’t track exactly what is happening with the stocks they have already bought. The fact that they are doing things themselves gives them the illusion that they know what’s happening and if the situation gets tricky they’ll manage to get out of it.


    (The author is CEO, Value Research)
    (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)

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