Psychological principles of behavioral finance include among others heuristics and biases, overconfidence, emotion and social forces. A very important step for an investor is to understand his financial personality. In other words, in the posture of an investor, it is vitally important to understand why you make certain financial decisions or how you are likely to react in common conditions of uncertainty. This form of analysis is useful in an attempt to understand how you can temper the irrational components of investment decisions while still satisfying your individual preferences and requirements.
About Behavioral finance
It portrays the behavior of investors and management in decision-making; it illustrates the outcomes of interactions between investors and managers in financial and capital markets. As decision- making is an art to undertake complex situations and investors make irrational decisions during their investments.
Stock market returns are one area of finance where psychological behaviors are often assumed to influence market outcomes and returns but there are also many different angles for observation. The purpose of the classification of behavioral finance is to help understand why people make certain financial choices and how those choices can affect markets.
The impact of biases is a crucial component of behavioural finance studies. Multiple factors can lead to biases. Generally speaking, biases fall within one of five major categories. When focusing on the examination or classification of certain industry or sector outcomes and results, understanding and identifying various behavioural finance biases might be crucial.
Concepts of Behavioral Finance
Behavioral finance typically encompasses five main concepts:
- Mental accounting: Mental accounting refers to the propensity for people to allocate money for specific purposes.
- Herd behavior: Herd behavior states that people tend to mimic the financial behaviors of the majority of the herd. Herding is notorious in the stock market as the cause behind dramatic rallies and sell-offs.
- Emotional gap: The emotional gap refers to decision-making based on extreme emotions or emotional strains such as anxiety, anger, fear, or excitement. Oftentimes, emotions are a key reason why people do not make rational choices.
- Anchoring: Anchoring refers to attaching a spending level to a certain reference. Examples may include spending consistently based on a budget level or rationalizing spending based on different satisfaction utilities.
- Self-attribution: Self-attribution refers to a tendency to make choices based on overconfidence in one’s own knowledge or skill. Self-attribution usually stems from an intrinsic knack in a particular area. Within this category, individuals tend to rank their knowledge higher than others, even when it objectively falls short.
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Behavioral Finance in the Stock Market
According to the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), stock prices are always accurately priced to reflect all the information available in a highly liquid market. The efficient market hypothesis, however, is refuted by several studies that have shown long-term historical events in the securities markets that cannot be convincingly explained by models based on perfect investor rationality.
The EMH generally assumes that market participants evaluate stock prices logically in light of all current and upcoming intrinsic and external factors. According to behavioural finance, markets are not entirely efficient when it comes to studying the stock market. This makes it possible to observe how social and psychological factors may affect stock purchases and sales.
The knowledge and use of behavioural finance biases can be used on a daily basis to analyse stock and other trading market movements. Generally speaking, behavioural finance theories have also been applied to offer more understandable explanations for important market oddities like bubbles and severe recessions. Despite not being a component of EMH, portfolio managers and investors have a stake in comprehending behavioural finance trends. In order to study market price levels and variations for speculative objectives as well as decision-making, these trends might be used.
Behavioural Finance Traits That Affect Stock Market
Ambiguity Aversion
This tendency is to choose well-known options over obscure ones. Let’s make a comparison to stock investing. What occurs when the market falls? More harm is done to the midcaps and small caps than to the huge blue-chip caps. This occurs as a result of investors’ relative lack of confidence in the smaller businesses. This also occurs while choosing to purchase stocks. Large caps are typically preferred by investors over mid- and small-caps. By learning more about midcaps and tiny caps, you can avoid it.
Confirmation Bias
One important aspect of investing in stocks is tracking the markets. We track markets by observing market trends, reading news, and following expert opinions on financial news channels. While accessing these mediums, investors often avoid useful information that might not coincide with their investment expectations. This leads to irrational investment decisions. You can cope up with confirmation bias by analyzing every market information you come across.
Status Quo Bias
Does the idea of reviewing your portfolio scare you? If yes, your investments are surely suffering from your status quo bias. To avoid this you can reach about different investment options, and take measured investment steps.
Herd Mentality
You might have heard stories about people investing in stocks, either absolutely benefitting or losing all their money. Whom should you consider, the losers or the gainers? You should consider none of these stories if you wish to make the right investment decision. The volatility of the stock markets is often the result of herd mentality. You can avoid succumbing to herd mentality by studying stocks and staying invested for long.
Self-Herding
Renowned behavioural psychologist, Dan Ariely coined this term. When you base your future investment decision on your past decisions, you are self-herding. Suppose, last time when markets were showing a downward trend, you sold your stocks and reduced your losses. This decision might not be the best solution for similar market trends. You can avoid this by analyzing the reason behind the market trend.
Irrational Exuberance
You might have heard about the financial bubble of the early 2000s, or the very famous “Dot Com Bubble” of 1990s. These asset bubbles were the result of market overvaluation. Market overvaluation might occur due to investor over-optimism. Noble Prize-winning economist, Robert Shiller in his research suggested that both, tech and housing bubbles were the result of irrational exuberance.
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Conclusion
- By understanding how and when people deviate from rational expectations, behavioral finance provides a blueprint to help us make better, more rational decisions when it comes to financial matters.
- Behavioral finance is an area of study focused on how psychological influences can affect market outcomes.
- Behavioral finance can be analyzed to understand different outcomes across a variety of sectors and industries.
- One of the key aspects of behavioral finance studies is the influence of psychological biases.
- Some common behavioral financial aspects include loss aversion, consensus bias, and familiarity tendencies.
- The efficient market theory which states all equities are priced fairly based on all available public information is often debunked for not incorporating irrational emotional behavior.
FAQs
Q. What is the effect of behavioral finance?
Ans: It portrays the behavior of investors and management in decision-making.
Q. How does behavioral finance explain the stock market bubble?
Ans: Bubbles are typically attributed to a change in investor behavior, although what causes this change in behavior is debated.
Q. What is behavioral finance and its impact on investment decision-making?
Ans: Behavioural finance attempts to better understand and explain how emotions and cognitive errors influence investors in their decision-making process.
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