In the corporate world, there's a term for corporate bullshit - sonorous but essentially meaningless or vague phrases that a company uses in situations of failed strategies or even trivial uncertainty. In a new <a href="https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/19/jargon-watch/">study</a>, psychologist Shane Littrell shows that the tendency to "fall for" such corporate speak is linked to relatively low-quality decisions at work. For an investor, this can be another tool for filtering information and a way of assessing how much to trust the people whose companies you've invested in.

How to recognize corporate bullshit: risk signals for investors

The rise in anxiety and burnout in developed countries is often linked not to childhood trauma, but to the structure of the economic system. If capitalism shapes behavior and perception, the investor may be less rational than he or she thinks.

Privatizing stress: how capitalism affects the psyche

Investors are always looking for the "right answers", especially during times of market turbulence like now. Will a recession begin? Is it better to buy or sell? The problem is that most of these questions don't have an answer - they require a solution. And both factually and psychologically, finding an answer and making a decision are different things. How do you learn to make decisions in the face of uncertainty? An economic model of the psyche can help, writes Konstantin Kunakh, psychologist, author of the <a href="https://www.litres.ru/book/konstantin-kunah/straday-s-tolkom-kniga-instrukciya-po-gramotnomu-ispolzov-71035111/">book</a> "Suffer with reason" and the<a href="https://t.me/usepain"> Telegram channel of</a> the same name.

How an economic model of the psyche can help investors 

Due to the soaring cost of oil in Europe and the United States, prices at gas stations have risen sharply. In particular, the cost of a liter of diesel <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260309-france-launches-nationwide-petrol-station-inspections-as-fuel-prices-jump">has risen</a> by about 16% in France since the last pre-war day on February 27. Psychologist Mikhail Tegin explains why, when the cost of a barrel of Brent oil reaches almost $120, our emotions turn on inside in addition to analysis and calculations: we are ready to sell promising tech sector stocks just because it has become 30% more expensive to fill up the car.

 The psychology of the "empty tank": why do gasoline prices scare us more than nuclear war?

The share of equities in investors' portfolios has reached a record level since the end of 2024, so optimistic investors have not been for the past five years, a February survey of global fund managers conducted by Bank of America showed. Meanwhile, the amount of cash held in mutual fund portfolios is unusually low at just 3.4%. This bias in favor of riskier assets is dangerous, <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-sentiment-risk-3bc44ebe">writes</a> Barron's. Over the past few years, stocks have been growing, and perhaps the desire to invest in them now is a consequence of cognitive distortions, psychologist Mikhail Tegin does not rule out. In his column for Oninvest, he discusses how this makes us act against logic and to the detriment of our investment portfolio.

Behavioral finance: how the brain gets in the way of making money in the marketplace

In one week, a new AI tool from Anthropic to automate clerks' work, <a href="https://oninvest.com/article/anthropic-i-openai-vypustili-obnovlenia-v-razgar-rasprodazi-na-rynke-eto-novyj-udar">led to</a> a big sell-off on Wall Street in several industries at once. Investors fear that the new AI capabilities could jeopardize traditional business models. Analysts from New Street Research believe that the fall in markets is due not so much to objective factors as to anxiety. In psychology, particularly cognitive-behavioral psychology, experts describe four rules by which an anxious person lives. In investments, they turn us from analysts into indecisive people or even panickers. Psychologist Mikhail Tegin explains how these mechanisms work on the stock market and how to turn them to your advantage.

Four rules of anxiety: how to stop fearing the AI apocalypse and not expect the worst

Sleep-deprived people <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11611806/">stop perceiving</a> negative feedback, i.e. a losing trade no longer makes the tired person's brain adjust the investment strategy. At the same time, the brain switches to the energy-saving mode and starts using simplified thinking patterns. And although in the world of finance it is commonly believed that success depends on intelligence, in reality this is far from true. Let's see how fatigue not only makes us risky, but also inconsistent in our investments.

The cost of burnout: how sleep deprivation and everyday stress reduce investment returns

In a year into his second term, US President Donald Trump has forced new trade deals on many of Washington's allies. After he declared the first trade war last April, investors <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stocks-poised-for-biggest-two-day-wipeout-in-history-as-marketloses-9-6-trillion-since-inauguration-day-430919f6">lost</a> about $6.6 trillion in the U.S. stock market in two days. When he backtracked in negotiations, indexes <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/stocks-rally-trump-tariff-pause-after-market-rout-2025-04-09/">soared</a>, with the S&amp;P 500 up 7% and the Nasdaq <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/stocks-rally-trump-tariff-pause-after-market-rout-2025-04-09/">up</a> more than 9%. For investors, Trump's negotiating strategy has become a significant market risk factor.

Donald Trump's trade wars: how the US president's negotiating strategy has become a market risk factor for investors

The VIX fear index fluctuated in a 19% range this week, first rising to 20.1 points as it approached the edge of the stress zone, and then falling about 16%. Investors were reacting not to objective macroeconomic data but to Donald Trump's plans for Greenland - as a result, U.S. stocks <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cb1a8211-ac60-4cb2-b68f-955f3d0f98f5">lost</a> more than $1 trillion on Tuesday. In such an environment, reactive decisions can lead to financial losses. Why discipline and system help an investor to act more effectively than intuition and quick analytics - explains psychologist Mikhail Tegin.

$1 trillion loss in a day on fear: How market discipline saves money

The festive reset easily pushes us toward New Year's resolutions. As we <a href="https://oninvest.com/article/prazdnicnye-obesania-pocemu-oni-bol-se-cem-prosto-spisok-pozelanij">wrote</a> earlier, the plan to become an effective investor and double your income will have to be put into practice at some point.  But almost immediately, our commitments cease to be a source of motivation and begin to weigh on us — every glance at the market or banking app increases our stress. The reason is not weak willpower, but how the brain works and the cognitive traps we create for ourselves.

New Year's resolutions as a cognitive trap: what prevents us from seeing our plans through to the end

The New Year and Christmas often feel like a clean slate, a new phase: an opportunity to reset old habits, "reset" failures and lay the foundation for future success. We make solemn promises to ourselves - commitments: to start running, to read more books or, especially important for investing, to finally strategize and increase our income.

Holiday promises: why they're more than just a wish list

Intuitively, it may seem that for the long-term investor, the best companies are those that consistently make money by selling basic necessities to people, whether the economy is growing or declining. However, a recent<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w34402"> article</a> published by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research shows that the market is taking a toll on that psychological comfort. Issuers whose businesses are more dependent on the state of the economy have historically generated higher returns than securities of companies with stable earnings.

Psychology