IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/beexfi/v12y2016icp65-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How does investor confidence lead to trading? Linking investor return experiences, confidence, and investment beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Hoffmann, Arvid O.I.
  • Post, Thomas

Abstract

Confident investors trade more than less confident investors, but why? Prior research tests the ultimate relation between investor confidence and trading, but does not empirically examine the underlying mechanism that explains why confidence leads to trading. We complement the literature by developing a conceptual framework and presenting empirical evidence on a psychologically plausible mechanism through which confidence leads to trading. Using a combination of individual investors’ brokerage records and matching monthly survey data, we show that more confident investors rely more on intuitive judgments when forming beliefs about expected returns. In particular, they rely more on naïve reinforcement learning and extrapolate individual return experiences into the future more strongly. Given the same return experience, more confident investors change their beliefs more strongly, providing more reason to trade. Ultimately, confident investors have higher turnover, which hurts their performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoffmann, Arvid O.I. & Post, Thomas, 2016. "How does investor confidence lead to trading? Linking investor return experiences, confidence, and investment beliefs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 65-78.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:beexfi:v:12:y:2016:i:c:p:65-78
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbef.2016.09.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214635016300429
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbef.2016.09.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Salem, Razan, 2019. "Examining the investment behavior of Arab women in the stock market," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 151-160.
    2. Stefano Giglio & Matteo Maggiori & Johannes Stroebel & Stephen Utkus, 2021. "Five Facts about Beliefs and Portfolios," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(5), pages 1481-1522, May.
    3. Khan, Mohammad Tariqul Islam & Tan, Siow-Hooi & Chong, Lee-Lee, 2017. "How past perceived portfolio returns affect financial behaviors—The underlying psychological mechanism," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1478-1488.
    4. Kumar, Satish & Rao, Sandeep & Goyal, Kirti & Goyal, Nisha, 2022. "Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance: A bibliometric overview," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    5. Benomar Ikram & Ben El Haj Fouad & Chelh Sara, 2023. "An Exploration of Overconfidence and the Disposition Effect in the Stock Market," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, June.
    6. Steven Shead & Robert B Durand & Stephanie Thomas, 2021. "Predicting price intervals under exogenously induced stress," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-15, September.
    7. Gerhard, Patrick & Hoffmann, Arvid O.I. & Post, Thomas, 2017. "Past performance framing and investors’ belief updating: Is seeing long-term returns always associated with smaller belief updates?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 38-51.
    8. Ruiqi Rich Zhu & Cheng He & Yu Jeffrey Hu, 2023. "The Effect of Product Recommendations on Online Investor Behaviors," Papers 2303.14263, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    9. Fouz Khalid, 2020. "Factor Affecting Investment Behavior: Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy," Journal of Finance and Economics Research, Geist Science, Iqra University, Faculty of Business Administration, vol. 5(2), pages 112-125, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Belief formation; Individual investors; Investor confidence; Naïve reinforcement learning; Return experiences; Trading;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:beexfi:v:12:y:2016:i:c:p:65-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-behavioral-and-experimental-finance .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.