Smart people may have a bias blind spot

"I am fine as an investor analyst. The problem is with all the other analysts who are irrational! That is why I'm not making money." 

Many have a bias blind spot and believe that thinking biases exist with other people and not themselves. We have often heard the comments with respect to investing. The market is behaving irrationally. Those other investors are making mistakes not me. Those other investors have behavior biases but not me.

Actually, the bias blind spot exists there are extensive tests that provide strong evidence for a bias blind spot. Keith Stanovich along with two other researchers extensively tested individuals for the bias blind spot in their paper, "Cognitive Sophistication Does not Attenuate the Bias Blind Spot". Most find fault with others not themselves. What is surprising is that those who have higher SAT scores also have a slightly larger "bias blind spot". Smart people are not biased because they are smarter and make fewer cognitive mistakes. "Adults with more cognitive ability are aware of their intellectual status and expect to outperform others on most cognitive tasks", yet that is not present in the data. 

It's not me, it's them. Smart people should be able acknowledge a bias blind spot and adjust to it. That is not the case. They may be a desire to focus on the failure of others and not themselves when it comes to biases. They can lead to significant failure when playing a trading where you are competing against others for alpha.