Just finished a nice little throw-away mystery novel - The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro which uses the Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist as a backdrop for a story about art forgery in Boston. It is always a thrill to read a book set in your home town because you can place yourself in local settings and better visualize the place of characters. However, I am not writing a book review.
What caught my attention was the key theme of observing. We see what we want to see and do not actually observe what we are looking at. A Degas painting is viewed as a Degas because we are told that it is so. Is it really? Can we spot a forgery? If we are told a painting is a forgery, but that information does not fit our priors will we believe it?
Perhaps this discussion on art forgery has nothing to do with investing, but my guess is that the greatest failure in investing is seeing what is before us. If we are told by enough people that the economy is doing better, will we really look closely for signs of the opposite. Can we spot the fraud in analysis and investment advice? Most likely we do not want to look hard enough at the evidence.
What caught my attention was the key theme of observing. We see what we want to see and do not actually observe what we are looking at. A Degas painting is viewed as a Degas because we are told that it is so. Is it really? Can we spot a forgery? If we are told a painting is a forgery, but that information does not fit our priors will we believe it?
Perhaps this discussion on art forgery has nothing to do with investing, but my guess is that the greatest failure in investing is seeing what is before us. If we are told by enough people that the economy is doing better, will we really look closely for signs of the opposite. Can we spot the fraud in analysis and investment advice? Most likely we do not want to look hard enough at the evidence.
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