Making Better (Investment) Decisions by Robert C. Jones (2016): A Journal Review

This article presents a review on the Journal of Robert C. Jones “Making Better Investment Decisions”. The vast literature and academic debates in finance presents a wide array of conceptual and theoretical frameworks on investing and decision making. Robert C. Jones, a Certified Financial Analyst, is an advocate of active investing and is affiliated with Systems Two Advisors. His works revolve around practical applications of making better (investment) decisions, active management in investments and machine learning for stock selection to name a few. His background is reflected in this article under critique, “Making Better (Investment) Decisions” which was published in 2016. In this article, Jones centered on how people make actual investment decisions, and presented advice on how to make better decisions. The main idea of his article states that a decision-making advantage is more feasible than an information advantage. This article is coherently organized, such that the first half presented a review of literature from cognitive psychology about how people make decisions, what are the persistent biases in human judgment and why they arise particularly emphasizing on the implications for investors. In the second part, this article discussed several established practices to improve decision making, especially centered on how investors may possibly use them.