Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Five Reasons Why Stocks Have Fallen

If the market’s recent dive led you to buy or sell, you’re doing this investing business wrong.

October 31, 2018 at 3:00 PM 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.”

This guy said, “A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.”
Photographer: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

A few weeks ago, we discussed retrospective prescience — why everyone is so amazingly good at explaining what just happened. Apparently unaware of our own hindsight bias, we spin comforting narratives to help us understand recent events, despite having no knowledge of how things would unfold in advance.

My explanation for the stock-market correction is at risk for these same behavioral errors.