’s famous Wall Street observation highlights how investors may blame advisers after losses instead of examining their own decisions. The lesson is to treat financial advice as an input, understand investments independently, assess risk and learn from mistakes.

“People would rather believe that they have been robbed than that they have been fools on the advice of fools.” The quote by American financial writer Fred Schwed Jr.

captures a familiar weakness in human behaviour: when a decision goes wrong, people often find it easier to blame someone else than to acknowledge that they may have made a poor choice. This tendency becomes particularly visible in the world of investing.

When a stock falls sharply after an investor buys it, the immediate reaction can be to blame a broker, analyst, friend, social-media influencer or market commentator who recommended it. Read more: Quote of the day by Henry Singleton: " Our attitude toward cash generation and asset management came out of our own thought process.

It is not copied. After we acquired a number of businesses we reflected on aspects of business.

Our own conclusion was that the key was cash flow." But investing decisions ultimately remain the responsibility of the investor.

Schwed, best known for his witty observations about Wall Street, often highlighted the gap between how people perceive themselves and how they behave when money is at stake. His quote suggests that accepting a loss can be psychologically easier when it is framed as something done to us rather than something resulting from our own judgment.

The danger of following advice blindlyFinancial markets are full of opinions. Every day, investors encounter stock recommendations, market forecasts, trading calls and predictions about where an asset could move next.

The problem arises when investors treat these views as certainty rather than information. A recommendation may be based on reasonable assumptions and still turn out to be wrong.

Markets are influenced by economic data, interest rates, corporate earnings, geopolitical developments and investor sentiment, many of which can change unexpectedly. Blindly following advice can therefore create two risks.

First, an investor may enter a position without understanding it. Second, when the investment performs poorly, the investor may be more inclined to blame the person who offered the advice rather than examine the decision-making process.