Ford, GM: 2 Stocks I Would Not Touch With Your Money

In any event, the reaction to articles about "sucker stocks," which often double as low-priced stocks, pretty much reinforces the points I make in the articles.

Passion and emotion rarely produce positive outcomes for investors. The subject -- individual investor psychology -- does not get nearly enough attention. We really need to open up about it. It should come as no surprise, however, that we do not. As a nation, we're reluctant to foster open and honest discussions about mental health.

That's really what investor psychology comes down to. It's a mental health issue. It's about experiencing an emotion and then handling your reaction to it. Do you discount it? Do you rationalize it? Do you ignore it? Do you filter it? Do you laugh it off?

These are the questions my therapist used to ask every time I reverted back to the same old behaviors. Rocco, there you go again. Discounting. Rationalizing. Ignoring. Filtering. It made me so mad I wanted to flip the couch over. But, I finally faced it, he was 100% correct.

Investors who invest in dead-money stocks like SIRI or stocks with sexy ticker symbols -- BBW -- need to face this reality as well. If you're a mental health professional, there's a hole in the industry for a practice that specializes in dealing with investment-related psychological issues. In fact, you could fill an appointment book just by marketing to longs of Ford and GM.

At the time of publication, the author was long FB and MSFT.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.

At the time of publication, Pendola was long FB and MSFT.

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