Coreen T. Sol, CFA

Coreen T. Sol, CFA Coreen T. Sol, CFA, Senior Portfolio Manager, CIBC Private Wealth
Author - Unbiased Investor: Reduce Financial Stress & Keep More of Your Money (Wiley, 2022)

Through the course of my practice over the last 30 years, I have refined a process to reduce stress by limiting the impacts of naturally occurring biases present in complex financial decisions, life’s inflection points, and during volatile markets. By building and maintaining passive income and matching income needs with planned liquidity, we create long-term financial security for our clients and

their families. My passion to understand bias in financial decisions provoked my books, Practically Investing, Smart Investment Techniques Your Neighbour Doesn’t Know (2014) and Unbiased Investor: Reduce Stress in Financial Decisions and Keep More of Your Money (2022). I was also fortunate to research curriculum for the Faculty of Management at UBC Okanagan where I lectured in behavioural finance in 2015 as part of their undergraduate program. I credit my experience as a professional ballet dancer at Ballet British Columbia for my dedication, drive, and curiosity, while the years building a practice and raising three teenagers has provided some insights into my client’s own priorities and objectives. When away from my office, I can be found on my yoga mat, a golf course, gnu snowboard, or my road bike. I also feel passioned to support our community and the arts including Ballet B.C., Ballet Kelowna, the Vancouver Art Gallery, CIBC Run for the Cure, and other vital organizations.https://www.cibc.com/content/dam/pwm-public-assets/documents/pdfs/social-media-disclaimer.pdf

Ask someone their risk tolerance and you get a sentence. Watch what they do in a drawdown and you get the truth.Step fiv...
06/26/2026

Ask someone their risk tolerance and you get a sentence. Watch what they do in a drawdown and you get the truth.

Step five of the Personal Economic Values framework, from Unbiased Investor, is the honest reconciliation of those two numbers. The said tolerance — moderate, balanced, aggressive — almost never matches the revealed tolerance, which is whatever the investor actually did the last time the portfolio dropped fifteen percent.

The gap matters. Asset mixes and decumulation projections get built on the said number. The portfolio sized for balanced is being run by a brain wired for conservative.

The useful diagnostic is the most recent drawdown. What did you do in March 2020? In 2022? The version your transaction history shows, not the version polished for a meeting.

Looking at the most recent drawdown you lived through, what did you actually do — and does the asset mix in your current plan assume you'd do the same thing again?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

Your information diet feels like research. Most of the time it's reinforcement.Confirmation bias is the pattern where th...
06/24/2026

Your information diet feels like research. Most of the time it's reinforcement.

Confirmation bias is the pattern where the brain preferentially seeks, weights, and remembers information that supports existing beliefs. Peter Wason demonstrated it in 1960 — participants kept proposing examples that confirmed their guess instead of examples that might falsify it.

In portfolio construction, the bias shapes what gets reviewed. The feed reinforces the asset class already overweight. The newsletter confirms the macro view already held. The second opinion gets sourced from someone known to agree.

The correction is a disconfirmation list. For every strong portfolio conviction, write down the three pieces of evidence that would change your mind. If they ever land, the conviction should move with them.

Pick the largest overweight in your portfolio. What is the one piece of disconfirming evidence that, if it appeared, would make you trim it?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

Investors realise gains too early and defer losses too long. The pattern shows up across forty years of brokerage data —...
06/22/2026

Investors realise gains too early and defer losses too long. The pattern shows up across forty years of brokerage data — and it runs roughly opposite to what tax theory recommends.

Shefrin and Statman named the effect in 1985. The mechanism is loss aversion plus mental accounting — a paper loss isn't a real loss until the position is sold, so realising the loss is what the brain treats as the loss event.

A gain works the opposite way. Realising it locks in the win and removes the risk of giving it back. The brain prefers the certain smaller gain to the uncertain larger one.

The pattern is expensive. Held losses compound the mistake. Sold gains forfeit the tail of what was working. The unrealised loss that could have offset gains elsewhere sits in the account another year.

Which holding in your taxable account is sitting on an unrealised loss right now — and what would change if you sold it for the tax benefit?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

06/21/2026

In this week’s The Week Ahead, Benjamin Tal highlights the risks associated with expanding rent control measures, referencing Manitoba’s Bill 13. He notes that while rent control is well-intentioned, it often leads to reduced supply and quality of rental housing.

Tal proposes that tax deductibility is a more effective way to support renters than artificially capping rents.

Long term is the excuse the brain reaches for when a number would be inconvenient."This is a long-term position." "Long-...
06/19/2026

Long term is the excuse the brain reaches for when a number would be inconvenient.

"This is a long-term position." "Long-term, this will work itself out." The phrase carries weight in a planning conversation, but in a stress test it carries none — long-term isn't a date, and a plan needs dates to be testable.

Step four of the Personal Economic Values framework, from Unbiased Investor, replaces every long-term in the plan with a year. Grandchild's tuition is 2031. Cottage transition is 2034. The conservative pivot is 2040.

The specificity changes what the portfolio is allowed to do. A 2031 cash need has different risk than a 2041 one. Without the year, the whole account gets risk-weighted to the average — and the average is rarely what any single goal needs.

For each major goal in your plan, what year is it actually attached to — and how does that change the account sleeve it should be sitting in?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

Ask someone planning to retire at sixty when they actually expect to stop working. The honest answer is usually three to...
06/17/2026

Ask someone planning to retire at sixty when they actually expect to stop working. The honest answer is usually three to five years later than the calendar says.

Planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate the time, cost, and obstacles attached to a future plan. Kahneman and Tversky documented it across construction, tax returns, and PhD dissertations — the optimistic estimate beat the realistic one even when the realistic one used the planner's own past data.

In retirement planning, the pattern is sharper because the estimate gets bound up with identity. Three extra working years compress the decumulation window the portfolio was sized for.

The correction is the outside view. Out of ten people in your position, how many retired on their first planned date? Rarely above three.

What is the year you've named for retirement — and what is the latest year you'd actually accept if the plan needed to move?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

The most dangerous investor in the room is usually the one who is sure.Overconfidence is the bias where the brain rates ...
06/15/2026

The most dangerous investor in the room is usually the one who is sure.

Overconfidence is the bias where the brain rates its own skill and prediction accuracy above the rate at which the world rewards it. Kahneman called it the bias he would most want to eliminate.

Barber and Odean tracked 65,000 retail accounts. The most active traders earned 6.5% annually before costs — 11.4% below the market after costs. The activity wasn't the strategy. It was the symptom.

The pattern shows up most in people with real expertise. The CFA charter doesn't cure it. The thirty-year career doesn't cure it. Skill in one domain often widens the gap in adjacent ones.

The correction is a forecast log. Write down ten current convictions, date them, revisit in twelve months. Felt-skill is almost always above hit rate.

Which one of your strong investment opinions are you willing to date and check against twelve months from now?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

Instagram (69 words, 5 blocks)

06/14/2026

In this week’s The Week Ahead, Benjamin Tal explores whether AI investment is fueling short-term optimism beyond what fundamentals justify, and examines the challenges impacting the future of AI-driven economic growth.

Most people describe their wealth as it was three to five years ago.The number they carry in their head was last accurat...
06/12/2026

Most people describe their wealth as it was three to five years ago.

The number they carry in their head was last accurate during the last major financial review or the last memorable market move. The actual number has been moving the whole time.

The third step in the Personal Economic Values framework, from Unbiased Investor, is honest assessment of the starting point — not what the plan needs to be true, but what is true today. The current portfolio balance, not the felt one. The current real-estate equity, not the appraised value from the renovation year. The current liabilities, including the line of credit nobody's discussed since the kitchen project.

Plans built on lagged perceptions inherit the lag. Every projection traces back to whether the starting figure was honest.

What is the dollar gap between what you'd guess your net worth to be right now, and what the most recent statement actually shows?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

Ask an owner what their business is worth, then ask a buyer. The gap is rarely a negotiation. It's a bias.The endowment ...
06/10/2026

Ask an owner what their business is worth, then ask a buyer. The gap is rarely a negotiation. It's a bias.

The endowment effect, demonstrated by Knetsch and Thaler in 1990, is the tendency to value something more highly the moment it crosses into the column marked mine.

The business owner with thirty years in one company's stock sees a number that includes late nights and a recession survived. The market sees a multiple of cash flow. The inherited portfolio is held in the shape a parent built, because changing it feels like betraying the original judgment.

The test that strips the bias: would you buy this position today, at this price, with this cash, if you didn't already own it? If the answer is no, the position is being held by the bias, not by an investment thesis.

Which holding in your portfolio would you not purchase today at today's price?

— Coreen Sol, CFA

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