Dear M.D.,
Your
question is my question. Physicians should be top-drawer investors.
They have high IQs, a science background, they understand statistics,
and they are no-nonsense people. Yet time and again I talk to
doctors whose investment returns are sub-par.
Here
are some theories:
1)
Doctors are overconfident. The same self-assurance that
works so well for them professionally trips them up when they
go to Wall Street. Overconfidence causes doctors to trade too
often and put too much faith in active management.
2)
Doctors are too busy. Simple economics dictates that
they use their time where they have a competitive advantage:
practicing medicine, not with a hobby investing. They don't
have the time to make a proper study of the field.
3)
Doctors assume that finance professionals have expertise
like their own. Since doctors undergo arduous study and
training to acquire their professional shingles, they assume
that people who hold themselves out as finance professionals
have mastered a similar body of knowledge. They are unaware
of the flimsiness of most professional certifications in finance,
or the trivial entrance requirements to the field.
4)
Doctors are a targeted high-risk group. Because they
are believed to have lots of money (oh, for the good old days
),
and because their contact information is easily acquired by
marketers, physicians are deluged with offers from all sorts
of sharpies eager to take their money. When it comes time to
invest, top-of-mind awareness goes to the glossy brochure on
the desk, not the stack of Financial Analysts Journal in
the library.
Conservative
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