PERSONAL FINANCE, Running with the Herd

Running with the herd certainly beats trying to run against it—and getting trampled in the process. But it comes with a cost: surrendering your own common sense for "group think" that often makes no real sense at all. As I pointed out last week, the character of the Wall Street herd has changed remarkably over the past two decades. Back in the 1980s, individual investors still accounted for the majority of stock ownership. Today, trading is squarely in the hands of big institutions and those who run them.