Worse yet, most of the time you guys don't even know you're being controlled by ghosts from the past. The fact is your investment "strategies" have less to do with your so-called rational brain than with old junk left by your mother, father, childhood traumas, school failures, rejections, deaths and other emotional shocks that secretly rewired your brain long ago.

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Seriously, you're kidding yourself if you think you're an adult making rational decisions. Forget quotes and data. Right this moment, I'll bet your brain is quietly digging into your unconscious memory bank for its "advice:" On picking this stock or that fund, on buying to prove you're a hero, on selling to relieve anxieties on trading for a thrill when bored. Emotions run you, not logic.

The psychological world of investing came into a new light last weekend, while driving up the Big Sur coast to Carmel. We stopped at the Nepenthe restaurant. In their Phoenix gift shop I saw a coffee cup with a sketch of Freud lounging on his own couch! The caption: "A Freudian sip is when you say one thing but mean your mother."

A sip, not slip. That bit of humor reminded me of my earlier work as a crisis counselor. I'm more Jungian than Freudian, but the message is the same: Investors are irrational and clueless about their motivations. Worse yet, many are so absolutely certain they're rational, even their emotional outbursts and loss data are dismissed.

Coming back along the Big Sur coast highway, the power of the irrational became clearer. My wife's a practicing psychotherapist. She bought a book by a Jungian analyst, James Hollis, at Carmel's Pilgrims Bookstore. She read it aloud to me on the trip back. Hollis writes about the subconscious "secrets" that possess and drive men, a familiar topic from my earlier research on the male midlife crisis.

Hollis' "secrets that men carry" tell us a lot about why more men turn to active trading, ignoring common sense and logic, resulting in portfolio losses. Trading is a battleground to prove your masculinity. Hollis' secrets also reminded me of recent studies by University of California behavioral finance professors Terrance Odean and Brad Barber, Merrill Lynch and others about how investors sabotage themselves.

The "secrets" men hide are their inner saboteurs. As Jung said: "The patient who comes to us has a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. If I know his secret story I have the key to the treatment."

But Jungians know men often live oblivious that their secrets quietly control rational thinking, explaining why male traders actively play the market even when they learn that short-term trading strategies often generate 50% lower returns than passive long-term strategies. Here are the four powerful "secrets" carried by men:

1. Rigid roles. Many men spend their entire lives fulfilling the expectations of their culture, church, community, parents and spouse. The roles they play often build inner resentments and pop up in other areas of their lives, sabotaging performance.

2. Fears and paranoia. "The world is a large and dangerous place," says Hollis. Men feel like a child inside and not only can't admit it but also are programmed to believe they should not feel fear. So they overcompensate with macho behavior in the market.

3. Suppress emotions. Playing football, Marine training and other challenges teach us that real men know how to take pain, how to maintain a stoic exterior, how to hide feelings and emotions.

4. Your inner feminine rules. First his mother, then all women out there and later the spouse, but ultimately it is the Jungian "alter ego," the anima, the feminine spirit within every man's psyche that gets him. Men fear this spirit, reject, deny, suppress it for it threatens their manliness, so it's kept secret. Insecure in their gender roles, men often overcompensate, angrily projecting their own weak self-image onto others, while living behind the facade of the macho man.

The truth is men are not free: These four secrets blindly drive men as investors. Psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School Prof. John C. Schott, editor of a financial newsletter, writes about typical investor profiles in his book "Mind over Money." "Each of these styles is based on feelings that are common to all of us" but expressed in varying degrees at different times:

Jungians believe that suppressing feelings just turns them into secret, unpredictable saboteurs. Odean and Barber's research tell us that women are better investors partly because men are more active investors and more likely to suffer trading losses, often quite serious. For example, in one study they discovered that passive investors outperformed active traders with returns of 18% vs. 12%. And yet men insist on actively trading.

What next? Here's a clue: With your next 10 or so investment decisions, treat them as Freudian slips. Yes, ask yourself: How is my mother (or something from your past) driving me to do this?

And if you think I'm the crazy one, ask a second question: Why is this exercise touching such a raw nerve that I feel I have to defend myself?