Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Your Brain Wasn't Built to Handle Reality

Investors, like political partisans, believe things that haven’t been proven.

April 3, 2017 at 11:00 AM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

Be honest with yourself.
Source: Bettmann/Getty images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Most Republicans -- to be precise, 74 percent, according to a CBS News poll -- think it’s very or somewhat likely Donald Trump’s offices were wiretapped, even though the White House has offered no evidence to back up the president’s claim that his predecessor ordered the monitoring.

I just love data points like this. They say so much about humans as a species -- how we process information, our inability to look dispassionately at a situation, the ever-present cognitive errors, even the challenges of reaching a simple, rational conclusion based on evidence.