📖John Neff

Behavioral Bias Awareness

🌿 Intermediate★★★★☆

Know your behavioral biases to avoid them.

💬

Know the common behavioral biases that trap investors: anchoring, confirmation bias, loss aversion, and herding. Awareness is the first step to prevention.

— John Neff on Investing,1999

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Risk control is like a seatbelt. It does not make the ride faster, but it keeps you alive when conditions suddenly turn against you.

📖 Core Interpretation

John Neff treats survival as the first objective. Limiting permanent capital loss, controlling leverage, and avoiding single-point failure are prerequisites for long-term compounding.
💎 Key Insight:Awareness of biases is the first defense against them.

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❓ Why It Matters

A single large drawdown can erase years of progress. Risk control is not timidity; it is the operating system that keeps compounding alive.

🎯 How to Practice

Define downside scenarios before entry, cap position size, avoid fragile leverage, and maintain liquidity so mistakes remain survivable.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Equating volatility with all forms of risk
Oversized positions without an exit plan
Using leverage to compensate for uncertainty

📚 Case Studies

1
Trimming Winners Before Black Monday (1987)
Neff reduced holdings in overvalued blue chips as valuations stretched in mid-1987, emphasizing his selling discipline based on P/E and earnings outlook.
✨ Outcome:When Black Monday hit, Windsor Fund losses were cushioned, allowing redeployment into cheaper quality names.
2
Exiting Overvalued Retailers (1991)
After a strong late-1980s run, Neff sold or cut retail names whose prices outran their earnings power, despite continued market enthusiasm.
✨ Outcome:Subsequent multiple compression hurt many retailers; Windsor under Neff avoided larger drawdowns and rotated capital into better risk‑reward stocks.

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