The Influence of Behavioral Factors in Making Investment Decisions and Performance: Study on Investors of Colombo Stock Exchange, Sri Lanka
Abstract
The main objective of this study is exploring the behavioral factors influencing individual investors’ decisions at the Colombo Stock Exchange. Furthermore, the relations between these factors and investment performance are also examined. As there are limited studies about behavioral finance in Sri Lanka, this study is expected to contribute significantly to the development of this field in Sri Lanka. The study begins with the existing theories in behavioral finance, based on which, hypotheses are proposed. Then, these hypotheses are tested through the questionnaires distributed to individual investors at the Colombo Stock Exchange. The collected data are analyzed by using SPSS. The result shows that there are four behavioral factors affecting the investment decisions of individual investors at the Colombo Stock Exchange which are Herding, Heuristics, Prospect and Market. Most of the variables from all factors have moderate impacts whereas anchoring variable from heuristic factor has high influence and choice of stock variable from herding factor has low influence on investment decision.
This study also tries to find out the influence of behavioral factors on investment performance. Among the behavioral factors mentioned above, only three variables are found to influence the investment performance: choice of stock has negative influence which is from herding factor. Over confidence from heuristics factor has negative influence on investment performance. Anchoring from heuristics factor has positive influence on investment performance. All other variables which are volume of stock, buying and selling and speed of herding variables of herding factor, loss aversion and regret aversion variables of prospect factor and market information and customer preference variables of market factor do not have influence on investment performance.
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. The Editors reserve the right to edit or otherwise alter all contributions, but authors will receive proofs for approval before publication.
Copyrights for articles published in MTI journals are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. The journal/publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.
