Most people are rational in their nonfinancial lives. They don’t believe in leprechauns or expect to throw a football like Tom Brady, write poetry like T.S. Eliot, sing like Nina Simone, or cook like Alain Ducasse.
Yet many of those same people are outrageously delusional about the markets. They try to constantly maximize profits while ignoring powerful forces that are within their control, like dividends and compound returns. Dividends, after all, account for about 45% of historical stock returns.