Table of Contents
Introduction
Behavioral Finance hypothesizes that people investments are affected by the behavior and the environment they are surrounded by. The increment in the impact of feelings on investing has given rise to an idea named as Psychological investing whereby a person’s investing conduct is impacted due to the enthusiastic part connected with the structure of investing. Worldwide economic markets are stimulated by way of many factors: the economic methods which take vicinity in the country and the world, institutional and political constraints, facts dissemination and accessibility, and so on. However, one of the most important elements is the people’s reaction and perception. For every investor, no matter economic contraptions, commercial enterprise is a constant decision-making procedure.
What is Behavioral Finance?
It is defined as a sub-field of behavioral economics, which proposes the use of psychology-based theories based on which stock market anomalies such as a drastic fall in stock prices or an unexpected rise in stock prices can be explained. Its sole purpose is to identify and understand why exactly people make certain financial choices. Behavioral Finance comprises several concepts, four key concepts are as follows:
- Mental Accounting, contends that individuals classify personal funds differently and hence are prone to irrational decision-making in their spending behavior.
- Herd Instinct, is a mindset that is based on the lack of individual decision-making and introspection, making people in a specific group or vicinity think and behave similarly.
- Anchoring, it is the process of using (referencing) irrelevant information to evaluate an unknown value of a financial instrument.
- High Self-rating.
Behavioral finance is the result of the structure of various sciences. Psychology- a science that investigations procedures of conduct and psyche, how procedures are impacted by the physical, psychical, and outer condition of the person; finances a system of formation, circulation, and utilization of assets conduct account is the investigation of how psychology influences financial decision making the procedure and financial markets. Since psychology investigates human judgment, conduct, it can likewise give significant realities about how human activities differ from customary financial-economic assumptions.
Behavioral finance as a science turned out to be particularly well known after 2002 when Daniel Kahneman was granted The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for having incorporated bits of knowledge from a mental examination into economic science, particularly concerning human judgment and basic leadership under vulnerability.
The meaning of behavioral finance guesses two significant angles singular financial specialists or the common investors and the whole market. In other words in a wide sense is isolated to macro behavioral finance and micro behavioral finance (Pompian, 2006). Macro-Finance conduct money unveils and portrays inconsistencies of effective market speculation that could be clarified by models of individuals conduct. Micro behavioral finance properly analyses the behavior and the deviations of the individual’s investors and this separates them strictly from the rationale person if any comparison is made and scientific models are to be followed.
Investing in financial markets in ongoing decades has turned out to be prominent among institutional as well as individual financial specialists. Correspondences and data have turned out to be accessible worldwide in seconds speed. Without a doubt, speculation choices rely upon the object and its monetary status later on, yet regularly short – term value changes are driven by market members that are not constantly founded on logic, now and then are motivated by temperament/mood or in a split second ‘got news’ attitude.
The field of behavioral finance endeavors to clarify why individuals settle on monetary choices that are in opposition to their very own advantages. This behavior helps to investigate how behavioral finance can profit singular financial specialists. Basic behavioral factors affecting investor according to Fischer and Gerhardt (2007) are Fear; Love; Greed; Optimism; Herd instinct; the tendency to focus on the recent experience; the tendency to overestimate oneself and one’s knowledge.
Statement of Problem
Ideal Situation: A market where retail investors do not let their or others behaviors/sentiment affect their instinct while investing.
Reality: A large share of the retail investor’s end up gambling on the stock market due to external and psychological influence that results in them incurring huge, unbearable losses.
Consequence: As a result of the difference between the ideal situation and reality, there seems to be a negative psychological and mental effect on retail investors. It also causes huge amounts of losses to these investors, a lot of whom would end up making rash and uncalculated decisions.
Review of Literature
- Barber, B. M., & Odean, T. (2001). Boys will be boys: In this research paper, they explain how a stereotype Gender is always overconfidence, and how emotions play an important role while investing in the common stock investment. They found that gender does play a role in stock investment.
- Daniel, K., Hirshleifer, D., & Subrahmanyam, A. (1998): In this report, the author tells about the investor psychology and security market under and overreactions. How psychology plays an important role in both positive and negative reactions and likewise in the results as well.
- Daniel, K., Hirshleifer, D., & Teoh, S. (2002): In this report, the author talks about how investor psychology gets affected while investing in the capital markets when there is an introduction to new rule, regulations, and policies.
- Fischer, R., & Gerhardt, R. (2007): In this report, the author talks about the investment mistakes of individual investors or the first time investors, his mentality and compares it with investors who are either professional or seeks for the financial advice and its related impact.
- Hon-Snir, S., Kudryavtsev, A., & Cohen, G. (2012). Stock market investors: In this Journal, the author has talked about the comparison between different types of investors who invests at the different period and with a different mood, which gives the basis of difference on their rationality and their reliability on intuition.
- Uchitelle, L. (2001). Following the money, but also the mind: In this report, the author has explained the importance of mind concerning behavior when it comes to investing. He explains that behavior and mind both play a vital role while investing.