Behavioral Biases Affecting Decision-Making in the Financial Market

Abstract

For decades, the advent of behavioural finance has challenged market finance theories. The latter has been the subject of many criticisms from advocates of behavioral finance especially with regard to the rationality of investors. Indeed, recent studies have shown that investors are subject to bias arising from their own daily behaviour, which can distort their investment decisions. This article is intended to be a study of the different behavioural factors affecting decision-making among retail investors. The analysis of the data was carried out on a sample of 100 Moroccan individual investors. The results enabled a number of factors to be obtained which significantly influenced both the investment intention and the equity market participation. Thus, the financial expectations variable, overconfidence and financial literacy represented significant relationships with the intention to invest, while the financial situation, financial self-efficacy and investment intent significantly affect the equity market participation variable. Moreover, the study rejected the hypothesis that there was a mediating effect of the intention to invest between all the variables taken separately and the variable participation in the stock market.

Keywords

• behavioural finance
• investment decision
• financial market
• individual investors
• theory of planned behaviour (tpb)