Rip Van Winkle would be the ideal stock market investor: Rip could invest in the market before his nap and when he woke up 20 years later, he'd be happy. He would have been asleep through all the ups and downs in between. But few investors resemble Mr. Van Winkle. The more often an investor counts his money - or looks at the value of his mutual funds in the newspaper - the lower his risk tolerance.
Richard ThalerThere are cases when I can make myself better off by restricting my future choices and commit myself to a specific course of action.
Richard ThalerSo, what's a nudge? A nudge is some small feature of the environment that attracts our attention and alters our behavior.
Richard ThalerIf people just put away what's left at the end of the month, that's a recipe for failure.
Richard ThalerLTCM lost money when Russia defaulted on a certain class of bonds, and then they had other investments like on the spread between two different kinds of shares of Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company. Now that seems completely unrelated to Russian bonds. But they were related because other hedge funds saw similar discrepancies and they were all making similar bets.
Richard Thaler