Ayn Rand’s famous novel Atlas Shrugged offers a behavioural explanation for investors’ tendency to remain inert, particularly during times of market stress:
The value of sound risk management varies depending on the investment environment. The ability to manage risk has little value when conditions are favourable. During a bull market that occurs against a backdrop of attractive valuations, low leverage and a hospitable economic climate, risks are minimal and any move to take profits and reduce risk will likely make you worse off — just sit back and enjoy the proverbial ride.
But wait. To pull this off, you need to do the impossible and successfully predict exactly when markets will turn from favourable to hostile and vice versa. In other words, you need to be consistently right … or do you?“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring,” according to Pulitzer Prize winning astrophysicist Carl Sagan.
If this isn’t sufficient proof that trying to be consistently right is an exercise in futility, just look at the forecasting track record of Wall Street strategists. Moreover, it can be very expensive to convince the markets that you are right.