How to pick winning styles of shares for your portfolio

Warren Buffett once said that “Investing is simple, but it’s not easy”. I guess he finds it hard, like me, because he binge-watches Netflix instead of doing investment research. Yes, it’s damn hard to be a good investor these days. So many important things to do, like streaming season 42 of “yet-another-tv-show”, scrolling 300 feet of social media or downloading yet another to-do app to see if it makes you more productive.

But seriously, we do live in an information-overloaded age. Do you know what the brain does to cope with all this information? It classifies, and groups everything as a shortcut. We develop buckets for everything - from people to animals, to brands to stocks. It makes coping with the world so much easier, even if we argue (and often fight) about where the edges lie.

The problem in the stock market is that the groups we instinctively use can be extremely narrative driven . We think “it’s an innovative stock”, rather than empirically knowing “it’s a low odds stock”. Following narratives with your money can, like following a pied piper, lead you teetering from a cliff.

So it’s on that note that...