Whitney Tilson Quotes

The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory.

None of us always make the best financial decisions.

You have a natural tendency to want an emotionally satisfying tale - and to make investments based on that - despite times when the actual data may be telling you something different.

It is true that from a behavioral economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So from this perspective it is rather depressing. But at the same time there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches!

We historians are increasingly using experimental psychology to understand the way we act. It is becoming very clear that our ability to evaluate risk is hedged by all sorts of cognitive biases. It's a miracle that we get anything right.

There is much evidence that people are not rational, in the economist’s sense; nor do they take into account expectation, in the precise interpretation of that word. As a result, economic theory often does not correspond with what happens in the market. Some would argue that we need descriptive economics. I would argue that all should be taught about probability, utility, and MEU (maximization of expected utility) and act accordingly.

I love Richard Thaler's 'Quasi Rational Economics.' A collection of some of his most interesting and inventive essays, the real foundation of behavioral economics.

The great thing about behavioural psychology and economics is that they help us to see that there are actually pretty good reasons why human beings swing from greed to fear, and why we're not really calculating machines or utility-maximisers.

I'm smart with my money, I invest conservatively. I don't mind paying top-dollar, but I don't want to get ripped off.

I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.

Some studies show that women can be better money managers than men because they tend to be more conservative and do their homework. Men tend to take more risks without the research.

I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.

When you have a lot of money, there's so many places you can go to manage your money. But when you don't have money, mathematically you actually need a financial plan more. You can't really afford to make mistakes. So why is this such a luxury product?

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing.

Life is a story. You and I are telling stories; they may suck, but we are telling stories. And we tell stories about the things that we want. So you go through your bank account, and those are things you have told stories about.

When we're in a peak, we make a ton of money, and as soon as we make a ton of money, we're desperately looking for a way to spend it. And we diversify into areas that, frankly, we don't know how to run very well.

I think one of the major results of the psychology of decision making is that people's attitudes and feelings about losses and gains are really not symmetric. So we really feel more pain when we lose $10,000 than we feel pleasure when we get $10,000.

If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesn't get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

Policy makers, like most people, normally feel that they already know all the psychology and all the sociology they are likely to need for their decisions. I don't think they are right, but that's the way it is.

I don't think I've ever made any good financial decisions.

My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into the fields of political science, economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and philosophy of science, among others.

Sometimes your mind lets you do things with your money that make no sense.