If you could buy the same stock in two different ways, one of which cost up to nine times as much as the other, you would pick the cheaper way.

Wouldn’t you?

Perhaps you shouldn’t be too sure.

In a new study, finance researchers have caught investors in the act of wildly — and unnecessarily — overpaying for a stock. In effect, investors paid as much as $9.07 for shares that they could have bought at the exact same time for $1 instead. That casts some doubt on the idea that financial markets are efficient. It should cast more doubt on whether all investors, including you and me, are as shrewd as we think.

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