When geopolitical relief rallies arrive, investors sell their winners and hold their losers. The research explains why, and what it costs.

When peace deal headlines send oil prices down 5%, investors with energy gains face a specific cognitive trap. The same bias that made them hold losers too long now makes them lock in winners too early.

Every rumour of a deal sends oil prices lower and energy stocks higher. Behavioural finance research explains why this pattern is dangerous, and why advisors who understand it are positioned to prevent a costly mistake.

When markets bounce on ceasefire optimism, a well-documented psychological mechanism pushes investors toward a mistake they will regret the moment the next headline arrives.

Gold stayed near $4,500 Tuesday while Canadian miners shed 2% to 6%. The divergence is not a market anomaly. It is the availability heuristic doing what it always does: overwriting the correct frame with the most recent one.

Eleven weeks of elevated crude has recalibrated what investors call "normal." The research on anchoring explains why that shift is dangerous — and why the most costly portfolio decisions of 2026 are still ahead.

Markets are selling off this morning not because anything went wrong in Beijing — but because nothing went spectacularly right. That distinction matters enormously for investors, and most of them will not make it.

Two consecutive data surprises are triggering a well-documented cognitive pattern. Here is what the research shows about how investors process sequential bad news, and why the worst decisions tend to follow the clearest-seeming signals.

Markets recovered from the Iran war shock weeks ago. A measurable cohort of retail investors never came back. The research explains why — and what it costs them.

When dramatic, vivid events dominate the news, the availability heuristic causes investors to overweight recent and visible risks and underweight gradual, probabilistic ones. The Hormuz crisis is producing exactly this pattern, and the portfolio decisions it is generating are systematically predictable.

When geopolitical shocks dominate the news cycle, the availability heuristic inflates perceived risk and drives selling at exactly the wrong moment. Six weeks into the equity recovery, the divergence between investor sentiment and market reality has never been clearer.

The vivid imagery of a closed strait, $110 oil, and 30% higher gas prices has activated a well-documented cognitive bias. Kahneman and Tversky's availability heuristic is producing exactly the portfolio distortions advisors should expect, and address.