This trip is for the stock traders among you. What kind of annual return are you aiming for? 30% or 20% or 10%? What’s your number? Humans, and especially those of the male persuasion, have a bias called The Lake Wobegone Effect.  They have the tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities resulting in unrealistic expectations.  It is named after the fictional town created by Garrison Keillor, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” That combination of overconfidence and misplaced expectations are a killer in the markets. Consequently, the decision process that men use to assign capital to a trading account tends to be colored by the unexamined assumption that the trader will be successful and that warnings about risk of loss do not really apply to him. Unfortunately, this sets up the naïve trader for a fall, ......