<p>Studien utreder fondförvaltares investeringsbeteende i förhållande till forskning om irrationellt beslutsfattande vid beslut som innefattar ett riskmoment. I studien har ett flertal fondförvaltare svarat på frågor som relaterar till forkning inom Behavioural Finance. Speciellt inriktat på Prospektteori och teorier om flockbeteende. Syftet är att identifierar eventuellt irrationellt investeringsbeteende hos fondförvaltare som i tidigare studier återfunnits hos privatsparare.</p>

Bakgrund: Anomalier på aktiemarknader, som bubblor och krascher, har länge legat till grund för diskussioner kring relevansen av traditionella finansiella teorier om den effektiva marknaden och investerares rationalitet. Människorna bakom aktiemarknadens köp- och säljknappar handlar inte alltid rationellt utan påverkas inför ett investeringsbeslut av rykten, information, media, analyser, tips, beslutsproblematik, prestationspress och annat. Men hur hanterar börsens aktörer vetskapen om detta irrationella investeringsbeteende? Eftersom institutionella investerare, till exempel fondförvaltare, förfogar över en stor del av marknadens kapital har vi valt att undersöka hur just denna grupp hanterar psykologiska faktorer och anomalier på aktiemarknaden och om det i förlängningen leder till ett rationellt eller irrationellt investeringsbeteende. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva och förklara hur, och i vilken utsträckning, förvaltare av svenska aktiefonder tar hänsyn till psykologiska faktorer vid investeringsbeslut. Vidare syftar studien även till att undersöka om faktorernas effekt ändras i olika marknadssituationer. Ett viktigt delsyfte är även att undersöka om det studerade investeringsbeteendet kan anses vara rationellt ur ett finansteoretiskt perspektiv. Metod: Uppsatsen har en fallstudielik ansats och är av kvalitativ karaktär. Studien baseras på en omfattande litteraturstudie samt djupgående intervjuer med tio förvaltare av svenska aktiefonder. Resultat: Studien visar att påtagligheten hos de undersökta psykologiska faktorerna ändras med marknadssituationen. Förvaltaren tar hänsyn till detta genom att vikta analysverktygen och därmed också de olika stegen i investeringsprocessen olika beroende på marknadssituation. Vi har dessutom funnit stöd för ett oavsiktligt och delvis rationellt flockbeteende mellan förvaltarna som på aktiemarknaden kan framstå som en anomali. I investeringsprocessen är fundamental analys viktig för förvaltaren vilket höjer graden av rationalitet i investeringsbeslutet. De psykologiska faktorer som vi i studien funnit stöd för försvagar däremot graden av rationaliteten i investeringsprocessen.

Studien utreder fondförvaltares investeringsbeteende i förhållande till forskning om irrationellt beslutsfattande vid beslut som innefattar ett riskmoment. I studien har ett flertal fondförvaltare svarat på frågor som relaterar till forkning inom Behavioural Finance. Speciellt inriktat på Prospektteori och teorier om flockbeteende. Syftet är att identifierar eventuellt irrationellt investeringsbeteende hos fondförvaltare som i tidigare studier återfunnits hos privatsparare.

For the past two decades, events on the world stage and particularly in the United States have serious implications for the operations of financial markets. In this study, we will attempt to provide some insights into information dispersion before and after three particular events: the near collapse of Long Term Capital Management in August 1998, the Tech-Bubble Burst in March 2000, and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. A study of these events will yield insights into the resolution of information uncertainties in the financial markets. We estimated state prices and state price densities using Claims-based asset pricing (a la Ross (2000)). We then used our results to gauge investor sentiments three months before and three months after each event. We also used two new measures of the level of pessimism in the market during these events: skewness of the state price distributions and the percentages of discount states (with state price densities greater than one). Our results clearly indicate that different markets reacted differently to the three events, and that there were different levels of information leakage in the markets for each event. As expected, the impacts from the 9/11 event were immediate but short-lived in both the SPX and NDX markets. Further, our results show that event impact contamination played an important role in the over- and under-reactions to the three events. More specifically, our results indicate that the LTCM event was closely related to and was probably precipitated by the Russian Currency Crisis. As well, the 9/11 event occurred immediately following predictions of a U.S. economic recession, and three months prior to the declaration of the War on Terror. Our results show lulls and peaks in market expectations which correspond to these separate and yet correlated events. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2008-05-30 13:29:49.85

Behavioural finance studies have documented that investors are subject to psychological factors (cognitive and emotional) and demographic factors (internal), and external factors that make their financial decisions less than fully rational. However, most of these studies have concentrated on developed countries and few on emerging countries. This study is aimed at investigating the internal and external factors that influence individual investors’ financial decision making in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman. It contributes to the behavioural finance literature by filling the gaps existing in the GCC countries in particular and emerging countries in general. The study adopts a holistic approach in using perspective theories in the analysis of data collected using questionnaires from 620 individual investors in Saudi Arabia and 590 individual investors in Oman. The data collected is analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in order to understand the behavioural constructs developed. The study has revealed that religiosity factors have a significant influence on individual investors in both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman. However, the impact was negative in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but positive in Oman. Positive psychological capital and psychological (cognitive and emotions emotional) factors are found to have a positive influence on investors’ decision making. Among these internal factors, religiosity factors have the highest impact while positive psychological factors have the least effect. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, investors’ decision making is positively significantly affected by economic factors and ethical and social factors, while political factors, governance and environmental factors and cultural factors do not significantly influence investors. In the Sultanate of Oman, however, political factors and cultural factors have a positive influence, while corporate governance and environmental factors influence investors negatively. Economic factors do not influence investors’ decision making in the Sultanate of Oman, contrary to the observed effect in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study indicates that there is a difference between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman’s individual investors in relation to the study variables, except for the cultural and psychological (cognitive and emotional) variables. These results have important implications on investors’ participation and future development of financial markets in the Sultanate of Oman and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Investors rely on secondary information sources, like cover stories, as market indicators due to time, information and resources constraints. However, studies in the US market gave mixed results about the potential use of cover stories while no publish research could be found in South Africa related to investors reaction to cover stories or whether an understanding of investment periods, company specific characteristics or bounded rational behaviour would yield superior abnormal returns from cover stories.In total, 1218 cover stories related to publicily listed companies were recorded from FinWeek and Financial Mail for the period 1985 to 2008 and categorised based on the Likert scale developed by Arnold et al. (2007). Event study methodology was used in the research.The research found evidence that investors did pay attention to very optimistic cover stories. Positive an neutral cover stories were contrarian indicators, while negative cover stories were momentum indicators of future company investment performances and the abnormal returns for an investment portfolio based on these cover story effects were optimised by short-selling cover story companies from healthcare, general retail and general mining industries and buying shares in control companies from the same industries and company sizes. The ability to earn long-term abnormal returns proofed weak form market inefficiency for the JSE. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The study focused on examining the saving and investment behaviours of South Africans. There has been no extensive research in existing literature that has focused on this area of study. This study intends to extend the understanding of what factors contribute to the decisions individuals make about saving and investment. The primary research objective was to explore and empirically test the statistical significance of income, education and gender related to the use of suitable financial products and investigate optimal ways to save and invest. This was a quantitative study which used secondary data obtained from the Human Science Research Council database gathered through a structured questionnaire. A sample of 2,972 individuals across the country participated in and completed the survey. The results illustrated that low-income participants saved less through informal saving schemes than high-income participants, but the statistical significant difference between these groups is too small. The findings also showed that less-educated participants used predominantly more formal saving products than highly educated participants and the statistical significant difference between these groups is large. Finally, the findings highlighted that females make better investment choices than males, but the statistical significant difference between these groups is too small. This study illustrated that low savings and investment in South Africa is influenced by the type of financial products used and also demographic factors such as income, education and gender. / Mini Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Financial Management / MCom (Financial Management) / Unrestricted

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of OPEC oil production cut announcements on stock returns of specified companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. Two categories are constructed from stocks of companies operating in oil, gas and mining sectors and companies operating in pharmaceutical, industrial engineering and industrial transportation sectors, respectively. The study is based on the theories of EMH and findings of behavioural finance and applies a CAPM model in the context of an event study methodology. Our findings show that in four out of five cases OPEC production cut announcements have significant effects on stocks in the chosen categories around the releaseof a supply cut announcement. The difference between post-announcement CAARs of the constructed categories is significant on one occasion. Organisations and investors can use these findings to better understand the impact of OPEC news announcements on the stock performance of companies in specified sectors.

During 2020, online brokers experienced an increase in people who began to invest their money on the stock market. This, because covid-19 made people realize that they needed an economic buffer in difficult times. Moreover, the stock market declined in the beginning of 2020 due to the pandemic which made people see the chance to make profits. Simultaneously, it was evident that the social media usage surged due to covid-19 as people could not meet each other psychically, which resulted in them using social media to interact. In the beginning of 2021, two events occurred in which investors made decisions based on turmoil on social media, which had tremendous effects on investors and the financial market as a whole. These events depicted how financial markets and social media are interrelated, which was interesting for us as we have specialized in finance and marketing respectively. Evidently, research merging these two areas is scarce which motivated us to explore how social media and its mechanisms affect investors when making investment decisions. From the above mentioned events, it could be seen that certain stocks were hyped within online communities, such as Twitter and Reddit. Subsequently, we deemed that it would be interesting to investigate how investors are influenced by online communities. Moreover, it appeared as if investors adhered to the large mass rather than the information that others expressed. Hence, we deemed that we would investigate online communities, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and user-generated content (UGC). The main purpose of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding of how social media influences, i.e. online communities, eWOM and UGC, affect non-professional investors’ investment decisions. By examining theories of investment decisions, we explored how investors act and also which factors that influence them in their decision-making process. The second area framed both the features and the power of online communities, eWOM and UGC which influence social media users. We performed a qualitative study to examine the mindset of nonprofessional investors and to investigate how they related to and acted upon the quick and accessible information produced online regarding firms and their activities. By our research, we aimed to provide insights on how marketing and finance affect one another, especially in the wake of the rapidly developing digital environment where information sharing on social media is taking new heights. This research was performed by using a qualitative study, in which semi-structured interviews were conducted to get a broader comprehension of the behaviour that investors adopt. The participants of our study consisted of non-professional investors, as we deemed the professional investors to be less adherent to external noise. Using the data from the interviews, we conducted a thematic analysis which resulted in specific themes related to areas of investment decisions, online communities and eWOM/UGC. The findings suggest that investors are affected by online communities, eWOM and UGC although mainly for inspiration, knowledge and information. Hence, our findings signify that investors use them to widen their knowledge and find new companies and sectors to invest in. Concurrently, investors highlight the importance of making their own analysis and research before making a final decision, which signifies that eWOM and UGC do not have a direct impact on investors.

The gamification trend has in recent years gained a strong hold across the field of finance. Market participants are leveraging the benefits of implementing game-design elements to previously mundane banking activities. However, while gamification is expected to grow further, the current research investigating its effects is scarce, particularly in a Swedish context. This research project aims to investigate if, and how the behaviour of retail investors is affected by gamification used on trading platforms. We collected qualitative data through seven semi-structured interviews with respondents who were active users of Avanza, the largest internet broker in Sweden. To expand the scope of the study, data was also included from a senior executive at Avanza creating a nuanced picture of the effects of gamification. Our analysis is grounded in the Octalysis Framework, which has been used together with behavioural finance theories to draw valuable conclusions. Our study finds that gamification has an effect on investors and may influence their trade decisions. We conclude that social game-design elements cause intrinsic motivation and have a strong effect on retail investors. The study further shows that visualising personal development has a strong extrinsically motivating effect on retail investors' desire to increase their capital. Our results also show that gamification can be used to promote both healthy and unhealthy financial behaviours, making it a powerful tool for the one’s controlling it. However, if not managed properly, excessive usage of gamification runs the risk of decreasing the perceived seriousness and validity of the institution implementing it. Lastly, this study concludes that investors tend to believe that gamification affects their investment behaviour less than others, suggesting that they suffer from overconfidence bias. Situating gamification and the Octalysis framework within a financial context contributes to the current discussion about gamification and the future understanding of the concept. By taking behavioural finance into consideration, we contribute to the field of behavioural finance by showcasing how gamification may affect the investment behaviour of retail investors on gamified platforms. The results of the study are of great relevance to market participants and regulators. Being aware of how gamification influences investor behaviour is necessary for market regulators to prevent exploitative behaviours and for market participants to make well-informed decisions.