Jag lyssnade igår på Rational Reminders podavsnitt #167 som gästades av professor Hersh Shefrin som skrivit boken Beyond Greed and Fear från 2002.
Avsnittet handlade i mångt och mycket om dom psykologiska aspekterna kring investeringar, och vad människor drivs av för parametrar.
En bit in i avsnittet diskuterades att människor bland annat drivs av förhoppningar, där professorn drog en paralleller mellan förhoppningsbolag och lotteri. Där genomsnittshushållet lägger i 2000$/år i lotter i Massachusetts:
The literature that developed on thrill-seeking behaviour was really insightful. The literature that developed on lottery stocks, the fact that there were certain classes of stocks that have similar features to lottery tickets, and the extent to which individual investors load up on those stocks, I think, that was really insightful. I know when Beyond Greed and Fear was published, I didn’t know for example, that in the US, and this is also true in Quebec, in Canada, that the expenditures per household on lottery tickets is really quite significant. Massachusetts, which typically is number one in terms of lottery expenditure per household, the average household, if you take the total number of dollars spent buying lottery tickets in Massachusetts per year, and you divide by the number of households per year, you will get a number over $2,000.
What you’ll find is, it’s a little bit lower in Quebec, but it’s still not insignificant. This tells us just how strong people have a need to take on very high-risk investments, hoping against hope for a huge payoff. The thing is, lottery stocks are – they comprise just under 10% of individual investors’ portfolios. What that means is that there’s a very strong need to really have a huge increment in your lifestyle, by taking those kinds of bets.
Lottery stocks are similar to lottery tickets in that their negative net present value projects. When you spend the money, the odds are against you that you’re going to – it’s money that you need to be able to afford to lose, because most people are going to lose when they make those kinds of investments. Just that a few of them will wind up benefiting handsomely, because things will pay off. Those are some of the issues that are helping us to understand what the landscape looks like, the three themes are still intact, in terms of the pillars that help organize our thoughts, at least mine. The other elements are really filling in a lot of the details. Those really were not known to me anyway, 20 years ago, when Beyond Greed and Fear came out.
Hur mycket tror ni genomsnittssvensken lägger på lotter och förhoppningsbolag med hopp om att bli rika och förändra livet, trots att chanserna till storvinster är mycket begränsade, istället för att vara rationella och acceptera att vara genomsnittliga och investera i indexfonder istället? Vore kul om det fanns liknande statistik, någon som har någon data på detta?
