One of the biggest challenges investors face is resisting cognitive biases that can lead to poor decision making. A bias that often plagues investors is known as choice overload bias or overchoice bias. Choice overload bias refers to the phenomenon where having too many options to choose from makes decision making more difficult and can even cause decision paralysis. With an overabundance of choices, people struggle to weigh all the tradeoffs and potential outcomes, leading to suboptimal decisions or not making any decision at all. For investors, this bias can manifest when analyzing potential investments, building a portfolio, evaluating mutual funds or other financial products, and determining the right time to buy or sell securities.
The Paradox of Choice
The concept of overchoice or choice overload was popularized by the 2004 book "The Paradox of Choice" by psychologist Barry Schwartz. Schwartz explained that while modern society provides an unprecedented array of options in everything from consumer products to careers to lifestyles, this abundance of choice does not actually make people happier or more satisfied. In fact, Schwartz argues that too many choices produce psychological distress, cause people to second-guess their decisions after making them, lead to unrealistic expectations, and result in decision paralysis. This paradox plays out vividly in investing when people are confronted with thousands of options for funds, securities, strategies, advisors, and more.
Examples of Choice Overload for Investors
Here are some common examples that illustrate how overchoice can negatively impact investment decisions:
Mutual Fund Selection: With thousands of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to choose from, investors can easily get overwhelmed trying to select the "best" options. Analysis paralysis may set in as they try to compare expenses, holdings, historical returns, rankings, and other factors across too many choices.
401(k) Plan Options: Many employer-sponsored retirement plans like 401(k)s offer a dizzying array of investment options spanning stocks, bonds, target-date funds, actively-managed, and index funds. With so many possibilities, employees often struggle to construct an appropriate asset allocation.
Stock Picking: The universe of publicly traded stocks, especially considering options across sectors, geographies, and market capitalizations, provides an overwhelming number of individual equities to potentially invest in. Overload makes identifying mispriced opportunities extremely challenging.
Investment Account Features and Functionality: When opening a new brokerage account, investors have to choose from different account types, balance requirements, commissions structures, margin options, research and data tools, and more.
Market Timing Decisions: The never-ending stream of market news, data, expert opinions, and predictive indicators related to economic cycles and directional price movements provides too many inputs. This overload of information can cause investors to constantly second-guess their positions and timing strategies.
Mitigating Choice Overload
While reduced choices mean missing out on some potential opportunities, research shows that having too many options is demotivating and adds significant decision stress. To mitigate the negative effects of overchoice, investors should simplify their decision process. Create frameworks and pre-defined criteria to narrow down the reasonable options for your specific goals and risk profile. Work with financial advisors to cut through the noise. And favor diversified investment products like index funds rather than trying to pick individual winners.
Psychological Effects
Beyond the practical challenges of sorting through too many options, choice overload takes a psychological toll. Some of the effects include:
Excessive Expectations: With a vast number of alternatives, people develop unrealistically high expectations that the perfect option exists, clouding their ability to make a satisfactory choice.
Opportunity Costs: Having to forgo a large number of alternatives amplifies feelings of loss over missed opportunities and potential regret over the option chosen.
Lack of Commitment: With so much difficulty in arriving at a decision, people struggle to feel fully convicted about their ultimate choice and remain apprehensive.
Decision Fatigue: The mental effort required to evaluate an overload of options eventually becomes exhausting, clouding judgment.
Decreased Satisfaction: Rather than feeling empowered by many choices, people tend to feel less satisfied with their final decision when made under conditions of overchoice.
Heuristics and Simplification Strategies
To counter the detriments of choice overload, investors should adopt simplifying mental models, rules, and shortcuts. Some potential strategies include:
Set Screening Criteria: Narrow options by pre-defining must-have characteristics like risk tolerance, tax implications, cost limits, etc.
Leverage Default Options: When overloaded, a reasonable approach is sticking with standard default allocations like target date retirement funds.
Satisfice Rather Than Maximize: Satisficing means choosing an option that meets your minimum requirements rather than endlessly seeking the absolute best hypothetical option.
Limit Additions of New Choices: Adding to an already complex portfolio or array of accounts exacerbates overchoice issues, so limit expanding choices over time.
Batch and Schedule Decisions: Don't continually second-guess decisions. Instead, conduct reviews and rebalancing during scheduled intervals.
By simplifying their decision processes, creating filters and guardrails, and satisficing rather than maximizing, investors can overcome the downsides of choice overload bias. While some opportunities may be missed, the psychological and practical benefits often outweigh that cost.
Ultimately, being aware of choice overload bias and employing simplifying strategies can lead to greater investment satisfaction and better long-term performance.