summary

• Curious employees have better individual performance and drive innovation across their company.

• Due to these benefits, though, organizations fail to recognize when curiosity is incompatible with their ways of working.

• A company will see little to no improvement — and could actually suffer — from a perfunctory push for curiosity among employees.

• Useful curiosity is not so much an individual trait as an organizational trait.

• Your company needs to go all in on curiosity for it to bear fruit.

[Source]

context

In the same seminal paper where Abraham Maslow established his now-famous hierarchy of needs, he argued that curiosity “makes the person bigger, wiser, richer, stronger, more evolved, more mature.”

Today, eight decades later, business leaders are more enamored with the idea of curiosity than ever before. For good reason, too: curious employees are proven to be more creative, more committed to their organization, more accepting of feedback, and to generally perform better than other employees. On top of these individual perks, curious employees are also the ones that fuel innovation at every level of a company. Talk about overachievers.

what’s the catch?

That romanticized picture of curiosity ignores some practical roadblocks.

At the personal level, curious exploration is exceptionally draining on cognitive resources. This makes curiosity a tough sell for the thousands of employees who already find themselves exhausted and unfocused when they get home from work. Workers gravitating to the path of least resistance will intuitively avoid getting too invested in new information.

Worse, curiosity sparks frustration when the information we’re curious about is unavailable. This is commonplace in work settings as curious employees bump up against organizationally imposed limits. Sometimes these limits are desirable, like restricting access to sensitive information; however, they are more often an unintended consequence of the structure of the organization, like scattering information across disconnected departments. (Silos stink.) In the long run, employees’ minor irritation at each curtailment of their curiosity can snowball into severe resentment towards their company. But usually, employees just give up on engaging with their curiosity at work.

Social barriers to curiosity are the most burdensome. Sadly, employees asking well-intentioned questions are regularly perceived as incompetent or insubordinate. As children, this is baked into us at school. Teachers want to like students labelled as curious and creative, but these students are consistently teachers’ least favorites. Rule-following is rewarded, and nose-poking is punished. This structure gets magnified at work, because unlike at school, employees expect to be measured by their productivity, not their learning. We come to accept that following our curiosity at work would likely be a breach of social norms, so we just “go along to get along.” We wait to ask our questions until someone else asks first… but then everyone else waits too. Nobody wants to be the odd one out. In the end, we train each other into misjudging curiosity as no more than a pesky indulgence.

is organization-wide curiosity really possible then?

Organizational curiosity is definitely still doable in the real world. The issues above are not pitfalls of curiosity itself, but of unfocused and incomplete curiosity initiatives. They show why curious behavior doesn’t automatically emerge from curious people. And they are the key to why so many strategic pushes for curiosity don’t work.

Ordinarily, when a company wants to get in on the benefits of curiosity, they create schemes to encourage curiosity among their people. Consultants are brought in, slide decks are presented, and action plans are codified. Maybe the idea involves a seminar for managers, or a tweak to the onboarding curriculum, or even a whole new hiring process. Everyone pats themselves on the back, hopeful that their new program will improve productivity and foster a culture of innovation that keeps the company one jump ahead of its competitors. Then… nothing happens.

This familiar disappointment is due to a misconception about the nature of curiosity. We think about curiosity as an individual trait, but we need to start thinking about it as an organizational one. The responsibility falls on the entire business to deliberately inject and accept curiosity into every facet of the day-to-day. Curiosity is not an outcome; it is a modus operandi. It does not appear because of a tidy initiative; it arises naturally from a constellation of operational habits. Only when curiosity is a pillar of an organization’s identity can it really shine.

praxis

The foundation of practicable curiosity is surprisingly straightforward. Virtually everyone behaves curiously in the right environment, and virtually no one behaves curiously in the wrong environment. No matter your role, you can make your environment more amenable to curiosity.

for anyone

Brandishing your own curiosity is the single best way to encourage others to do the same. Ask questions, challenge assumptions, and experiment relentlessly. By taking the leap yourself, you give others the confidence to follow suit. Most teams will welcome these behaviors — almost three quarters (72%) of managers consider curiosity a “very valuable” trait in their employees — they just need someone to get the ball rolling.

Less accepting teams require slightly more nuance. Don’t let that stop you. If you’re careful, you can skirt any potential stumbling blocks by mastering what Todd Kashdan, a top curiosity researcher (and apparently a fellow Substacker!), refers to as the art of insubordination. Underlying this art are two essential tenets.

First, pick your battles carefully. Your curiosity should be constructive, not just intellectually interesting. Make sure your questions and challenges have the potential to advance your team’s understanding of the task or problem at hand. While bold defiance of the status quo is needed for bold changes, this only works for teams already making curiosity a cornerstone of their process. For others, these brash challenges are unhelpfully provocative. Stay disciplined.

Second, back others up when they reveal their curiosity. Instantly shutting down others’ suggestions is a surefire way to make them think twice about sharing in the future. The less open your environment is, the more open you need to be. Even one person can springboard a complete overhaul of their team’s approach to curiosity.

Speak up and make yourself heard… Listen to others who seek to do the same. But for heaven’s sake… be smart about it.

— Kashdan, 2022, p. 14

for strategists and entrepreneurs

Above all, to elevate curiosity within your business, your commitment to it needs to be visible. Make it a core value, and certainly don’t stop there. Ensure that every manager not only accepts curiosity (their own and others’), but delights in it. Ensure that every human in your organization has the opportunity to inspect and dissect what interests them, both for their good and the good of the business. And to reap the greatest rewards from curiosity, ensure that both time and space are dedicated to the practice of curiosity.

An extreme example of dedicating time to curiosity can be found in what 3M calls their 15% Culture or, more famously, what Google called 20% Time. For the uninitiated, these programs let employees spend a percentage of their paid time over a given period working on personal side projects. As Google’s former SVP of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, put it, “if you’re comfortable with the amount of freedom you’ve given your employees, you haven’t gone far enough.” By giving employees time to pursue projects that truly ignited their curiosity, these programs engendered some incredible innovations. Google News, Gmail, and AdSense all began as an employee’s pet project.

Such extremes are not the ideal, however. Despite popularizing the concept, even Google itself has abandoned 20% Time. Why? Because while it achieved amazing outcomes, it just isn’t sustainable for a mature business. That kind of freedom is wasteful. If you let thousands of employees throw a dart at the board, eventually one of them is bound to hit the bullseye — but you also have a lot of holes in the wall.

The answer is that employees need the freedom to explore any idea, but not the freedom to pursue any idea. All ideas need to be validated, regardless of where they came from. But that first part — the exploration phase — draws from employees’ diverse experiences and unique interests. Employees could thread their knowledge together into novel insights at home, but at work, they are focused, surrounded by other smart people to discuss ideas with, and likely have exclusive access to some phenomenal sources of information. Consequently, employees should have some latitude in their use of the business’s resources (e.g., time, money, and people) to investigate the ideas that really intrigue them, and your business should expressly offer these resources for that end.

If this sounds like an unwise investment for your organization, then you should reconsider whether curiosity needs any emphasis. Be honest with yourself and your employees. It might make more sense to have a bog-standard R&D department, or a beefed-up version of one, like Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. (A dedicated R&D unit is still helpful for businesses that have undergone a curiosity transformation.) Confining the business’s investment in curiosity to one team obviously hurts innovation, but that’s not such a loss for some businesses in some industries.

wrap-up

Too many leaders look to curiosity as a quick win — the silver bullet for a lethargic company and apathetic employees. That’s not at all what it is. Curiosity can be an organizational superpower, but it requires steadfast commitment from everyone.

As individuals, we can accelerate our own careers and our team’s success through intelligently baring our curiosity even in situations where it feels like a risk. Don’t be afraid to break the mold.

As leaders, we can expand our business’s capacity for innovation by bringing all employees into the process of innovation. Invest in your employees’ curiosity, and they just might surprise you.

Companies that monetize their data through a public API increase their market value 12.9% more than their peers after only two years. On average, this excess growth represents a 500× (= 50,000%) return on implementation costs. The gap between API-adopting companies and their peers widens by an additional 38.7% over the next 16 years as the APIs become vital pieces of broader data ecosystems. These effects aren’t limited to technology companies, either; businesses in any sector, of any size, and of any age were shown to experience identical benefits. [Source]

what is an API?

An API (or Application Programming Interface) is a documented gateway that gives programmers the ability to securely interact with your data. APIs can be either private or public. Private APIs are by far the more common flavor, and they are used by most companies with a digital presence. These APIs are purely internal, accessed by employees and contractual partners in a carefully prescribed way. This type of API powers most modern websites and mobile apps. Public APIs, on the other hand, are open to almost anyone who agrees to the terms of use: individuals, start-ups, and even competitors. Of course, these APIs usually come at a price, but many are willing to pay it.

how do you make a product out of that?

Before going any further, let’s clarify: if you want others to see your API as a product, you need to treat it like one. This sounds like common sense, but this point cannot be overstated, especially because the quality of an API is not immediately obvious to those who are not developers. When developing a normal website, even non-technical stakeholders can witness slow load times and design defects firsthand; when building an API, many comparable issues can remain hidden. This has dire consequences for the eventual success of the API. Your business needs to approach your public API(s) with the same data-driven product thinking as your other offerings.

More specifically, though, there are three key characteristics that distinguish the most successful public APIs from the rest. These are:

• security and reliability

• high discoverability

• logical structure

The security and reliability of your API is absolutely critical. These features minimize the risks involved for both your business and the customers that rely on your data, allowing your API to be smoothly integrated into an external data ecosystem (more on that later). Since these two aspects are ubiquitous to all good APIs, they are easy to take for granted, but they are certainly not guaranteed. Experienced developers routinely produce vulnerable APIs due to cognitive blindspots, and data breaches are the most salient danger of public APIs. Overlooking your implementation’s security and reliability can have disastrous consequences, so make these features the foundation of your API.

High discoverability implies that your API is advertised and search-engine optimized the same as any other product. Again, APIs are not as visible as other digital products, so it will require more effort to elucidate to potential customers the data you offer and the ways it can benefit them. Additionally, the best APIs are thoroughly documented and fully self-service, so that customers can intuitively learn to use and build on your product without any hand-holding. Without high discoverability, acquiring API customers is nearly impossible.

A logical structure improves the customer experience, keeping your customers coming back and opening the door to more serious customers. Without going into too much detail, you might not want to send all the data you can through one API. If necessary, logically divide your data across a few APIs, separated by the type of data they provide. Google Maps is a pristine example of this:

For those who are interested, Zhamak Dehghani has written some fantastic guides on why monolithic data lakes are bad and how to shift to a data mesh instead.

but why are public APIs so valuable?

As the expression goes, data is the new oil. Like oil, data is costly to obtain and difficult to refine, but it has a myriad of potential uses. Continuing the analogy, public APIs are the pipelines that transport the oil. On the surface, it might look risky for a company to simply hand away its most valuable and unique resource like this, even for a fee. After all, in the foundational resource-based view, exposing hard-earned data is needlessly setting fire to a sustainable competitive advantage.

This is not the case, however, because of data’s unparalleled value density. For instance, a relatively small spring of meteorological data could serve as the basis for a weather app, a complex forecasting system, a source for climate research, and much more. Data is too rich for a single organization to fully capitalize on. Wouldn’t you let others deal with the use-cases you can’t, to your benefit?

Even more simply, there are too many different types of connected devices for a single organization to build for all of them. Wouldn’t you let others build for the devices you can’t, also to your benefit?

how does this lead to growth?

Data perfectly aligns with the rationale behind the “inverted firm,” or a platform business model. Platforms are inside-out businesses; they’re designed to boost value creation outside the organization, not within. Not all platforms work with data — Airbnb, for example, works with short-term-rentable spaces. The hosts on Airbnb can be seen as the producers of lodging opportunities, which are consumed by guests. Unlike a hotel, Airbnb doesn’t own and develop its own properties. Yet, simply through connecting hosts and guests, it has fostered a flourishing hosting ecosystem. [Source]

(Substack is also a platform business. It connects writers with readers, with the ultimate goal of creating a larger pool of quality content than any traditional media company could. Furthermore, readers can get even more value by reading several publications which together enable a more complete perspective. This is why, if you enjoy Substacks like How They Grow, Market Sentiment, or Business Brainstorms, you should also be subscribed to Perspicua. ☺️)

A business that inverts itself is, in some sense, undergoing intentional vertical disintegration. In the end, it will contribute a smaller share of the value of the final product. However, the audience for that final product expands so remarkably as a result that this apparent flaw is far outweighed. Platforms are the network effect turned into a full-fledged business model. For this reason, platforms struggle in conventional value chains; instead, platforms join (or establish) an organic, non-linear value network.

Rather than flowing in a straight line from producers to consumers, value may be created, changed, exchanged, and consumed in a variety of ways and places, all made possible by the connections that the platform facilitates.

— Parker et al., 2016

Data-centric platforms are one form of inverted business. Similar to other types of platform businesses, the value of this type of platform comes from the connections made by outside parties. Compared to the substrates of other value networks, though, data has even more potential for synergistic combinations.

For a contrived illustration of this fact, take our meteorological data source from before and meld it with a social data source (e.g. X or Instagram). In conjunction, these two sources have more uses than either one on its own. A social event planning app that proposes ideas for specific weather conditions, perhaps, or a tool to assess the impact of weather events on a community’s mood and behavior. Without either of the data sources changing, the value of both increased by knitting them together.

In this way, each player in a data ecosystem complements — and is complemented by — the other players. In the real world, the connections that can be made from a handful of data sources can be downright revolutionary. Public APIs are the way for a business to integrate itself into these rewarding data ecosystems. And since reusing data is effectively free, a public API has the capacity to be joined with a near-infinite number of other APIs.

the wrap-up

No business today can get by without data, but much of the potential for that data is ignored due to outdated ideas about competitiveness. In reality, there are huge prospects for companies that approach their data as a product, because they will be able to participate in the blossoming data ecosystems that are driving the future of the digital economy.

The earliest entrants to a data ecosystem become the most central characters as it develops. Your business can be one of them if you start now on monetizing your data through a secure, reliable, discoverable, and logically structured public API. Don’t let your data go to waste.

MANAGEMENT & PEOPLE

how hiring for creativity can lead to hidden discrimination

what?

Trying to hire for creative and artistic roles is challenging. A common approach is to evaluate the creative merit of a candidate’s portfolio of past work,1 but this results in sub-par hiring decisions. By definition, creative works need to be novel in some aspect, which means that we don’t have a good reference by which to judge them. This makes evaluations of creative works fraught with uncertainty. The first issue with this uncertainty is that it quietly distorts our perceptions of creative products, biasing us against true creativity without even recognizing it as such.2 The second issue with this uncertainty is that it forces us to rely on personal characteristics of the candidate (like social status, gender, and cultural indicators) to guess at the creative value of their portfolio.

Faced with the need to decide under high uncertainty, [organizational] gatekeepers resort to publicly unpalatable and sometimes illegal criteria without acknowledging, or possibly even without being aware, that they do so.3

The fact that these personal features are embedded within the creative works lends them a sense of legitimacy, even though they are still protected characteristics. (Hence why the most cautious recruiters and hiring managers can still fall into this trap.) What we take as indicators of creative merit and quality are actually indicators that the creator’s cultural background overlaps either with our own or with our stereotype of creatively competent people.4

Employers show preference for applicants of high cultural status and who match them along culturally-based identity markers of similarity and difference.5

In the end, this signifies that most businesses attempting to hire for creativity are instead perpetuating inequities.

so what?

Businesses increasingly need creativity from all employees, not only those in “creative” roles. The vast majority of people believe that businesses that invest in creativity have greater financial success, as well as happier and more productive employees and a better customer experience, and a majority of consumers actively prioritize purchasing from companies with creative marketing and design.6 This effect is even more pronounced among younger consumers, so creativity will only become more important as Millennials and Generation Z increase their share of your customer base in the coming years.

Despite this, hiring practices haven’t evolved fast enough to keep up. For all creative positions — but especially for those where creativity is one of the foremost requirements — there is a systematic advantage for white men with upper- and upper-middle-class backgrounds.

[The majority] of job holders in the UK creative industries have class-privileged backgrounds and those with more modest backgrounds who make it in are paid less and are less likely to advance7. Men also dominate creative jobs: in the US, for instance, only 32% of musicians, 30% of television writers, and 25% of architects are women. Women are also less likely to reach the top of creative professions8 and are paid less9. Finally, creative jobs are disproportionately White. In the UK, for example, non-White employment in the creative industries is only eight percent, [substantially] lower than the overall non-White employment.10

While a few of these issues exist in other roles and industries, the adverse effect on disadvantaged groups is intensified by the hundreds of companies still hiring for creative roles in an uninformed way. Employers thus have a responsibility to improve their selection processes around creativity, for both themselves and all future candidates.

now what?

The most straightforward solution for many roles is a realistic job preview or a tryout. Let the candidates show themselves off. This not only allows people to demonstrate their creative competence in the most natural and relevant way, but it reveals whether they can put that creativity to use.

In situations where job previews are not an option, recruiters and hiring managers should build in systematic evaluations of the way that candidates think through creative problems. This means that after having candidates perform a creative task, they should be prompted to explain their thinking. Then, their responses can be inspected for patterns and processes of thought that are proven to correspond to creative efficacy, like receptivity to feedback and analogical reasoning (fluently making sense of new problems by drawing connections to what you already know)11.

When the candidates’ past work must be evaluated, evaluators can use objective rubrics of novelty (rather than of quality). As discussed, the perceived quality of a creative work depends heavily on the audience, since most of what we think is creative quality is actually our alignment with cultural cues present in the work. The overall novelty of a portfolio, on the other hand, more reliably predicts the creative merit of the candidate. Although it may seem reductive, construct a few quantitative measures by which the creative products of this role can be described. A candidate’s portfolio can then be judged on the newness and uniqueness of its works, rather than a faulty subjective quality metric.

MARKETING & SALES

why consumers love self-improvement

what?

Imagine that you hear whispers that most of your colleagues think you’re unfit for the promotion you just received. Or perhaps that you didn’t hit your performance targets for the second month in a row. Or even that you find out that your work friends have been sneaking off to lunch without you for a whole week. These are status threats. In a workplace environment, potential threats to an employee’s status are abundant.

One of the most common responses to such status threats is retail therapy; the reasons underlying this familiar buying behavior, however, differ from case to case. When consumers feel that their deficiencies are controllable12, they choose to consume products and services that directly address those deficiencies, like signing up for a relevant online certificate program or buying a relevant non-fiction book.

Recipients of status threats rarely feel so thoroughly in control of the situation, though. If given the opportunity, a significant number of these people will engage in a behavior called status pivoting, which is when they “pivot” from pursuing status in the threatened domain to pursue status in another domain.13 It is much easier to accept your own unexpectedly poor sales performance at work last month when you choose to focus on, for example, how much your cooking skills improved during the same period. In this situation, sales skill is the threatened domain and cooking skill is the alternative domain. Crucially, consumers readily buy self-improvement products and services in these alternative domains.14 As a result, there is evidence that self-improvement goods across all domains can find a surprisingly broad audience among, essentially, anyone with a job.

so what?

While it is obvious that some consumers want self-improvement products to tackle their perceived deficiencies, it is not as intuitive that consumers would also seek self-improvement products to improve in other areas. The implications of this could be huge; status threats are ubiquitous to all working adults and incredibly frequent, but are rarely capitalized on. This is in spite of the fact that almost any product encompassing self-help, personal growth, or continuous learning could align itself with this audience.

Better yet, the buyer motivation resulting from status threats sparks significant spending. Consumers will pay 50% more to maintain their status than to gain status,15 because effective presentation of self-improvement products taps into our general tendency to fear losses more intensely than we hope for gains.

It’s not just about the wonderful things that will happen if someone becomes a customer. It’s also about the terrible things that may happen to them if they fail to do so. Or, put differently, it’s about the painful situations they can successfully avoid if they do become your customer.16

This behavioral quirk is deemed loss aversion, and it is already being used successfully by marketers in industries like insurance, where the whole product is built around protecting against loss. The self-improvement sphere would be a fresh new application for this approach.

At this point, astute readers will surely argue that self-improvement is not the only solution to uncontrollable status threats, which is true. The most visible reaction is conspicuous consumption, or the buying of status-affirming or luxury goods specifically to show them off.17 If that’s not an option, almost all consumers eventually resort to hedonic consumption, or the buying of pleasure (food and beverage is the main outlet for this type of purchasing).

While “splurges” like these may be common (three in four consumers globally has splurged in the past month), they aren’t really satisfying. They are more about releasing emotional pressure than about receiving any utility. Matter of fact, conspicuous consumption can actively harm consumers, because it fosters rumination about the original status threat.18 But customers want to be able to justify the practicality of these purchases, and they will jump through mental hoops to convince themselves of it.19 So, why not give them what they actually need? Self-improvement consumption provides the same emotional benefits as conspicuous or hedonic consumption, and it offers genuine lasting utility that the other types of purchases do not. Any marketer in the self-improvement industry who can successfully convey this point will be able to reach a very fruitful, very underserved audience.

now what?

The easiest approach for businesses providing self-improvement products and services is to ensure that advertising materials are visible in places frequented by professionals. This may be an online platform like LinkedIn, an industry magazine or newsletter, or even something like public transit (depending on your location). Placing or advertising your product in venues where customers go for hedonic products could also work; when set side by side, many consumers will likely see self-improvement as the more justifiable purchase.

Messaging should emphasize how a product gives consumers control over themselves and their position or reputation. After all, remember that customers trying to improve themselves in one area are doing so because of a lack of control in another. Some crude example of slogans in this vein are choose your own destiny, or take your career into your own hands. A bonus to this genre of messaging is that consumers across all segments have been shown to be more willing to try a new product when it is framed as enhancing their control.20

Notably, not all self-improvement paradigms are equally appealing to control-seeking consumers. The products and services that address this group the best are those that demand a high degree of effort from the consumer post-purchase.21 People facing status threats don’t want to buy things that improve them; they want to buy things that allow them to improve themselves. As odd as it sounds, it may be necessary to undersell a product’s capabilities to emphasize the role that the customer plays in their own development.

FINANCE & ACCOUNTING

on retail investor hype and too much of a good thing

what?

The Reddit-fueled GameStop short squeeze in early 2021 proved what amateur individual investors (i.e. retail investors) could achieve with the benefit of the Internet. Since then, the activities and interests of retail investors have increasingly commanded the attention of established media. Despite this, it has been assumed that the potential impact of retail investors is limited to minor liquidity improvements without purposeful coordination.

Contrary to this assumption, there is evidence that a stock that receives too much attention from retail investors has a higher likelihood of a price crash in the near future than similar stocks.22 This is due to these stocks exhibiting a higher degree of information asymmetry.23 Here, information asymmetry refers to the difference, or asymmetry, between the reality of a company and the market’s knowledge of the company. Since the market’s knowledge of a company is captured in its stock price, severe information asymmetry leads to equally severe overpricing. When enough people finally realize the discrepancy, the stock’s price corrects downward… violently. This is a stock price crash.

Theoretically, the market price of a stock should change to reflect new public information about a company almost instantly. Retail investors make this an impossibility. To understand why, consider what constitutes a retail investor. By definition, they are not professionals;24 they are regular people with jobs and commitments. Consequently, retail investors have neither the resources nor the time to consistently research and maintain their investment portfolio. They may take weeks or months longer than active institutional investors to hear about and act on a piece on information.25 Delay of this kind creates and exacerbates information asymmetry,26 because people trading on old information can accidentally end up trading against more recent information.

so what?

Retail investors, as a group, are on the rise. For one, the Internet promotes stock market participation across the board by democratizing information.27 This is one of the first times in history where the average person could make informed decisions about their own investments without needing a degree in finance. Additionally, financial technology has been catering to retail investors for years. E-Trade opened the door, but Robinhood cemented them as a fixture of the financial landscape, especially during and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Six million Americans downloaded a brokerage app in January 2021 alone,28 which was over 2% of the entire adult population of the U.S. at the time. And as of mid-2021, a whopping 15% of all U.S. stock market investors had begun investing only within the past year.29 Growth rates like that are hard to ignore. Given that these trends are set to continue, it seems that retail investors are here to stay, so companies and financial professionals need to adapt.

now what?

While most retail investors are not uninformed or gullible, they do over-rely on social media for investment information.

The new segment of retail investors generally falls into two buckets. The first tends to be younger, first-time investors with limited discretionary income… The second bucket is comprised of savvier, more experienced investors with more money at their disposal. For both groups of investors, social media tends to play an extremely vital role in how they receive and process information, as well as how they make investment decisions.30

(Emphasis my own.) While retail investors cannot be expected to devote hours every day to keeping up with financial news, they should at the very least not wait until their social media feeds show the news to them. This is a major source of the information lag that causes information asymmetry. Plus, the algorithms that drive social media news worsen the asymmetry by inducing herding behavior. The real issue, however, is that when retail investors hear important news too late, they deprive themselves of the biggest gains and expose themselves to the biggest losses.

Retail investors today have access to more information than ever, but they’re largely ignoring it. Investopedia is a wonderful resource for financial and market literacy, and it will be able to answer most of the technical questions that retail investors might have. For day-to-day news, retail investors can simply turn to their brokerage app of choice; nearly all of them now aggregate relevant news articles about each stock, and display those articles in the same place as other stock information. Habitually reading the headlines for each stock in a portfolio takes less than 10 minutes daily. For those of you that are retail investors: try this out, and see the difference it makes. For everyone else, recommend information gathering habits like these to the retail investors in your life — for their benefit, and the market’s.

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