Shrink Rap: Victim-Blamer Investors Never Grow Up

Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
-- Erica Jong

This is the final installment in my series on various trading types. Our last type is the victim-blamer. Of the various trading styles, this type is the most emotionally and psychologically immature. The gambler-impulsive type, by contrast, who is often immature in his decision-making, is at least more often willing to assume responsibility for his poor decisions. Not so the victim-blamer.

Let me make one distinction between the person who is truly victimized and the one who only imagines he is, so as not to have to assume responsibility for his or her own actions. The investors mentioned in last week's column, for example, who lost their money through the dishonest and corrupt practices of their broker, may have been naive, but they were also victimized.

This is clearly different from those who simply prefer to blame others for doing things to hurt them when they have no proof of wrongdoing, and who use chronic blaming and complaining as their primary way of dealing with the world.

Personality

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