Summary
This chapter covered the third theme of behavioral finance, inefficient markets, which is connected with the earlier two themes by cause and effect. Heuristic-driven bias and frame dependence cause prices to stray from fundamental values. Three examples are (1) representativeness as a cause of the winner-loser effect; (2) conservatism as a cause of post-earnings-announcement drift; and (3) mental accounting as a cause of a historical equity premium that has been too high, relative to the underlying fundamentals. But as I noted, prices can stray far from fundamental value, and for very long periods.