Here is a great book I read and learned allot from. Members feel free to comment as always.
"Deceit and Self Deception", by Robert Trivers. Penguin Books, 2013.
Over the 17 years running this web site I have at times dwelled on the darker side of Thai stocks....the many Thai broker shortcomings, a few company misleadings, the Thai SET/SEC often lack of enforcement, Swiss bank "cowboy" practices, global financial eerie events, CNN and other major news services getting it wrong etc...at times these have upset me some and caused me “professional trauma”; which I here shared with you members over the years.
As from the level of background I came from I perhaps demand a higher standard and was bummed-out when it did not evolve over time and may never? And how few seemed to care.
Some seasoned members wrote me in private I should just be happy and not dwell on the dark side. Mabye it safer to be so, but is it healthier? I have taken this advice in stride and so opted out writing lately on these "professional trauma’side/shortcomings We all want investor winners here, not reminiscence on broker shortcomings even while these can go together to novice investors which get taken for a ride. And what about all those goofy expat financial advisers? Oh well, I will continue to avoid the dark side, but perhaps at the cost of a compromised immune system?
On page 125 this prominent author (which the legend Professor Steven Pinker calls "One of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought" ) quotes a long study which shows just this.
"Writing about trauma produced clear immune benefits". 20 year series of studies from the 1980's to year 2000 has demonstrated this again and again and in many different languages. "Subjects which wrote for four consecutive days writing in a private diary about their trauma showed through blood test to have increased their immune system. While they felt worse then the other control group which wrote about neutral things, people which wrote about trauma showed a clear improvement of their immune system....which was detectable even 6 weeks later”.
"In summary, the immediate feelings of confronting trauma is negative but the immune effects tend to be positive, and the longer-term effects on mood and immune system are both positive....emotional disclosure, even in the form of occasional autobiographical writing is often associated with consistent immune benefits."
Not sure if professional trauma, as I call it, qualify but there you have it: writing down' one's trauma's rather then always being positive, increases the immune system as is reported with credibility and backing by this author.
Tell this so next time you are at a social gathering and they may kick you out of the room, even while its true -as has been evidenced through blood tests.
Keep posted as I may here report more select most interesting findings/realities by this master author all on deceit and deception which he shows is all around us as well as in nature…But there are far too in this great book for me here to even touch on here, besides doing my day job.
Paul A. Renaud
www.thaistocks.com
