Hindsight is a wonderful thing, except when you're investing when it just tries to trick you.

Constant vigilance.

Hindsight bias is the tendency to see patterns in past events and then to try and apply those perceived patterns to present or future decisions.

The thinking is that, well, if it happened that way last time,

then it must happen the same way this time. Let's talk about why that makes absolutely

no sense. So let's put five minutes on the clock down here.

Say a quick thank you to my friends at 7 Investment Management for continuing to sponsor the show and let's crack on.

When talking about investing hindsight is never reliable.

We talk about having 20 hindsight. That is we look back at previous

events, see the patterns and we sort of tell ourselves that it was so obvious that that was

going to happen and we definitely saw it quite clearly at the time and so surely we can see it happening again.

We sort of nod sagely and say yes I knew the financial crisis of 2008 was going to happen.

Even if you're 22 now and you were 11 years old at the time

we can still tell ourselves stuff like that or even hindsight bias by proxy. You know everybody

saw that that was coming at the time and you know surely more people could have made better

investment decisions around it well that's 2020 hindsight if more people did see it

at the time it likely would never happen at all the fact is that there is hardly ever

any kind of pattern or predictability in past events

except when we look at them from the vantage point of the future and absolutely it's the case

that past events have zero relevance to current or future events.

Zero. You know in any other sphere of life this will just be self-evident we seem to

sort of get hung up on it when it comes to finance and investing. I mean if the

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