Paul B. Farrell: Happy investors are bad investors - Financial - Financial Services - Mutual Funds - Personal Finance

Paul B. Farrell: Happy investors are bad investors - Financial - Financial Services - Mutual Funds - Personal Finance: "ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The media love the new 'science of happiness' -- smiley faces, comics laughing, color photos of brain scans, monks wired on electrodes, eight steps to nirvana, tests scoring your happy level -- all irresistibly fun stuff."

But is happiness "bankable?" Will getting happier make you richer? Not as an investor. Happy investors aren't better investors. In fact, they're often very bad investors.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the new happiness gurus: Happy people make more money. But what they don't tell you is you're also more likely to lose money if you get too happy playing the stock market.

So listen closely: I'll show you the secret to making more money on the job and not losing all of it in the market, a strategy guaranteed to help you retire a happy millionaire.

First, the good news: Happy investors get their inspiration from psychologists like Dr. Martin Seligman, the godfather of "positive psychology" and author of "Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism."

Seligman and his colleagues focus on building healthy minds rather than curing mental pathologies. Their research proves that happy people live longer, are healthier, have more satisfying family lives, enjoy their work more and are content with what they have.

Now the bad news from the new behavioral-finance folks: These psychologists and economists warn us that when it comes to investing, you can indeed be "too happy." Their research tells us investors aren't