A Survey Analysis on the Investment Attitudes of Individual Investors

Abstract

This study aims to analyze determinants of trading behavior of individual investors where a survey of 55 questions on 85 people is used. The survey is composed of four parts: demographic properties perceived emotions investment preferences portfolio diversification. The findings show that investors are subject to home bias and the surveyed investors prefer to invest in local equity market. The findings show that older investors have less investment confidence and more diversification where number of different stocks and HHI (Hezfindahl-Hirshman Index) are used as two diversification measures in the analysis. The OLS regression and logit response results prove that male investors trade more and when the investor's equity portion of the total portfolios increases the number of trades also increases. The self-reported investment confidence level and greed have positive effect on diversification. Hence diversification level increases with the investor's equity portion of their total portfolios. The findings suggest that male investors on the average are more confident than females in their investment decisions and males who are more confident have better portfolio diversification choices.