A pickup in business and investor confidence, and a hope that inflation and global economic activity might be recovering, drove pleasing performance from investment markets recently in many parts of the world, most particularly in real estate and shares.

The saying goes that ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’. A corollary might be that a fool and a losing share are not parted soon enough. This article briefly examines that proposition.

In the last fifty years or so, highly respected academics have used experiments and real market studies to demonstrate beyond doubt that almost all investors rely more upon emotional triggers than calm reason when it comes to the buying and selling of stocks.