Peter Barlow: a study in behavioural finance

It's my convinced belief that there's more good economics in Corrie than there is in "serious" current affairs TV. Peter Barlow's impending loss of his bookie's shop reinforces this view.

His behaviour demonstrates three findings in behavioural economics.

1. When he started to lose money, Peter took reckless risks in an attempt to break even. This is an example of prospect theory at work - the tendency for people to gamble in an effort to recoup their losses.As Kahneman and Tversky wrote in their classic paper (pdf): "a person who has not made peace with his losses is likely to accept gambles that would be unacceptable to him otherwise."

2. Faced with the prospect of paying out on a 58-1 accumulator, Peter failed to lay off the bet. This is an example of ignoring tail risk - the small chance of big losses.

3. One reason he ignored such a probability was that he wanted Rob to lose: "Not only did I want to beat him, I wanted to beat him with one hand tied behind my back." His judgment of probability was coloured by motivated reasoning.

However, Peter's mistakes are not isolated ones. They are quite common in the financial world:

 - "Breakevenitis" is one reason for the disposition effect - the failure to ditch losing investments. This lack of selling pressure is one reason why the negative leg of momentum investing has so often paid off; it causes prices of losing stocks to be too high, with the result that they drift down later.

 - The ignorance of tail risk - the small danger of default, of of liquidity drying up or of counterparties failing to pay - was one factor (pdf) behind banks' failures in 2008. 

 - Libertarians who bought bitcoins above $100, gold bugs who bought gold above $1400 and the various inflationistas who are looking silly now are all sitting on losses caused by motivated reasoning - a wish that the world will conform to their political beliefs. Some neat experiments by Guy Mayraz have shown how easy it is for investment opinions to be shaped by wishful thinking.

Now, here's the thing. Peter has little education and a dubious grasp on his rationality; Rob calls him "a dry drunk who could spin out of control any second" and The World's Most Perfect Woman says he's driven by "macho pride."  And yet allegedly sophisticated "skilled" professional investors make the same mistakes he does.

Comments

[FromArseToElbow]

Is that actually a photo of Peter Barlow?

[rogerh]

So everyone knows Peter is a bit of a knob and may be made bankrupt - or a dramatic last minute rescue. Most Peters in this world will leave their industry as a failure duly recorded in their banking records. But what of other examples higher up the heap - NHS managers, government ministers etc.

Suppose there were a sort of WikiCV for senior public figures, would there then be the same tendency to implement obviously stupid or purely political policies destined to fail? Or would the knowledge that failure might impinge on future work encourage a 'No Minister, that's a stupid idea' attitude.

As it is we seem to have an extra twist on behavioral economics - a requirement to do the stupid thing - to toe the line. A jolly good reason to keep senior CVs a big secret then, at least long enough for a new billet to be found.

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