Purpose – People often face constraints such as a lack of time or information in taking decisions, which leads them to use heuristics. In these situations, fast and frugal rules may be useful for making adaptive decisions with fewer resources, even if it leads to suboptimal choices. When applied to financial markets, the recognition heuristic predicts that investors acquire the stocks that they are aware of, thereby inflating the price of the most recognized stocks. This paper aims to study the profitability against the market of the most recognized stocks in Europe. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors perform a survey and use Google Trends to study the profitability against the market of the most recognized stocks in Europe. Findings – The authors conclude that a recognition heuristic portfolio yields poorer returns than a market portfolio. In contrast, from t...