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Although prior research documents that analysts sometimes herd their forecasts, very few studies investigate how investors’ judgments are influenced by their perceptions of the likelihood of analyst herding. I conduct an experimental study to investigate the conditions under which investors’ assessments of uncertainty about future earnings are influenced by their perceptions of the likelihood of analyst herding. As expected, and consistent with motivated reasoning, the results show that the temporal order of analyst forecasts influences investors’ estimates of the likelihood of analyst herding and investors’ uncertainty judgments when analyst forecasts are preference-inconsistent but not when analyst forecasts are preference-consistent. This study provides a potential explanation for the mixed findings of prior research in regard to investors’ reactions to the likelihood of analyst herding. In addition, this study extends research on investors’ credulity by providing evidence that motivated reasoning and skepticism may serve as a mechanism that contributes to that credulity.

This paper synthesizes existing experimental research in the area of investor perceptions and offers directions for future research. Investor-related experimental research has grown substantially, especially in the last decade, as it has made valuable contributions in establishing causal links, examining underlying process measures, and examining areas with little available data. Within this review, I examine 121 papers and identify three broad categories that affect investor perceptions: information format, investor features, and disclosure credibility. Information format describes how investors are influenced by information salience, information labeling, reporting and accounting complexity, financial statement recognition, explanatory disclosures, and proposed disclosure changes. Investor features describes investors’ use of heuristics, investor preferences, and the effect of investor experience. Disclosure credibility is influenced by external and internal assurance, management credibility, disclosure characteristics, and management incentives. Using this framework, I summarize the existing research and identify areas that would benefit from additional research.

Management has considerable discretion over how to present and announce earnings components that are either unusual or infrequent, but not both (hereafter referred to as special items). In this study, we study the independent and joint effects of the accounting presentation format of, and the level of announcement prominence given to income-decreasing special items on investors’ judgments about the persistence of declining earnings.

Our study uses a 3 (format) × 2 (prominence) between-subjects design. In the experiment, participants act as proxies for nonprofessional investors to assess the persistence of a hypothetical firm’s declining earnings and make investment decisions.

Our results suggest that investors’ judgments are influenced by accounting presentation format and the level of announcement prominence. With respect to format, both classification and disaggregation affect investors’ assessment of earnings persistence. In addition, the degree of prominence given to an income-decreasing special item, albeit self-serving and not audited, introduces additional influence beyond that of accounting presentation format. In particular, we find that announcement prominence has a greater effect when the special item is aggregated with other operating expenses than when the special item is presented under the two other alternatives.

Our study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that presentation format and announcement prominence both have significant impact on investors’ judgments and decisions, and that their effects are interactive. Our results also indicate that future research can possibly gain better insight if it considers the accounting attributes of the special items in addition to their economic attributes.

In the stock market, herding behavior occurs when investors mimic the actions of others in their investment decisions. As a result, the market becomes inefficient and speculative bubbles form. This study aims to investigate the relationship between information, overconfidence, market sentiment, experience and national culture, and herding behavior among Malaysian investors. A total of 400 questionnaires are distributed to bank institutions' investors. The survey design based on cross-sectional data is analyzed using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model. The results indicate that information, market sentiment, experience, and national culture are positively related to herding behavior, while overconfidence has no effect. With this, the government should strengthen regulations to prevent the dissemination of misleading information. Moreover, investors are encouraged to overcome narrow thinking by expanding their understanding of different cultures when making investment decisions.

This article aims to systematically review the literature published in recognized journals focused on cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their effect on investment management activities and market efficiency. It also includes some of the research work on the origins and foundations of behavioral finance, and how this has grown substantially to become an established and particular subject of study in its own right. The study also aims to provide future direction to the researchers working in this field.

For doing research synthesis, a systematic literature review (SLR) approach was applied considering research studies published within the time period, i.e. 1970–2021. This study attempted to accomplish a critical review of 176 studies out of 256 studies identified, which were published in reputable journals to synthesize the existing literature in the behavioral finance domain-related explicitly to cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their effect on investment management activities and market efficiency as well as on the origins and foundations of behavioral finance.

This review reveals that investors often use cognitive heuristics to reduce the risk of losses in uncertain situations, but that leads to errors in judgment; as a result, investors make irrational decisions, which may cause the market to overreact or underreact – in both situations, the market becomes inefficient. Overall, the literature demonstrates that there is currently no consensus on the usefulness of cognitive heuristics in the context of investment management activities and market efficiency. Therefore, a lack of consensus about this topic suggests that further studies may bring relevant contributions to the literature. Based on the gaps analysis, three major categories of gaps, namely theoretical and methodological gaps, and contextual gaps, are found, where research is needed.

The skillful understanding and knowledge of the cognitive heuristic-driven biases will help the investors, financial institutions and policymakers to overcome the adverse effect of these behavioral biases in the stock market. This article provides a detailed explanation of cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their influence on investment management activities and market efficiency, which could be very useful for finance practitioners, such as an investor who plays at the stock exchange, a portfolio manager, a financial strategist/advisor in an investment firm, a financial planner, an investment banker, a trader/broker at the stock exchange or a financial analyst. But most importantly, the term also includes all those persons who manage corporate entities and are responsible for making their financial management strategies.

Currently, no recent study exists, which reviews and evaluates the empirical research on cognitive heuristic-driven biases displayed by investors. The current study is original in discussing the role of cognitive heuristic-driven biases in investment management activities and market efficiency as well as the history and foundations of behavioral finance by means of research synthesis. This paper is useful to researchers, academicians, policymakers and those working in the area of behavioral finance in understanding the role that cognitive heuristic plays in investment management activities and market efficiency.

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on investors' sentiments, behavioral biases and investment decisions in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

The authors have assessed investors' behaviors and sentiments and the stock market overreaction during COVID-19 using a questionnaire and collected data from 401 investors trading in the PSX.

Results of structural equation modeling revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic affected investors' behaviors, investment decisions and trade volume. It created feelings of fear and uncertainty among market participants. Evidence suggests that behavioral heuristics and biases, including representative heuristic, anchoring heuristic, overconfidence bias and disposition effect, negatively influenced investors' decisions at the PSX.

This study will contribute to behavioral finance literature in the context of developing countries as it has revealed the impact of COVID-19 on the emerging stock market, and its results are generalizable to other emerging stock markets.

The findings of this study will help academicians, researchers and policymakers of developing countries. Academicians can formulate new behavioral models that can depict the solutions of dealing with an uncertain situation like COVID-19. Policymakers like the Securities Exchange Commission and the PSX can formulate crisis management strategies based on behavioral finance concepts to cope with situations like COVID-19 in the future and help lessen investors' losses in the stock markets. The role of the Securities Exchange Commission is crucial as it regulates the financial markets. It can arrange workshops to educate investors to manage their decisions during crisis time and focus on the best use of irrational and rational decision-making at the same time using Lo (2004) adaptive market hypothesis.

The novelty of the paper is that the authors have introduced overconfidence and disposition effect as mediators that create a connection between representative and anchoring heuristics and investment decisions using primary data collected from investors (institutional and retail) to demonstrate the presence of psychological biases during COVID-19, and it has been done for the first time according to authors' knowledge. It is a contribution and addition to the behavioral finance literature in the context of developing countries' stock markets and their efficiency.

Guided by several pioneered studies, the purpose of this paper is to comprehensively investigate the investment behaviours of Malaysian retail and institutional investors in an attempt to identify whether the influence of psychological biases is equally applicable to investor divides.

The researchers have adopted a quantitative research design by way of survey methodology to obtain data from institutional and retail investors in Malaysia. In addition, the authors have mainly employed second-order measurement invariance analysis to uncover the difference across investor divides.

The tests of measurement invariance at the model level indicate an insignificant difference between institutional investors and retail investors. The post hoc test (at the path level) reveals that institutional and retail investors are similar with respect to representative heuristic, overconfidence bias and anchoring bias; though the results also show that they are different with respect to religious bias and herding bias.

Based on the findings of this study, it is generally not logical to assume that institutional investors completely behave rational during investment decisions. Besides, future researchers are called upon to directly compare the investment decisions of institutional and retail investors with respect to whether the influence of psychological biases is equally applicable to them, particularly on the investigated psychological biases and other psychological biases that are not covered in this study.

This study has offered insight into whether the influence of psychological biases is equally applicable to institutional and retail investors in Malaysia using second-order measurement invariance analysis. This study is unique in context and the approach it has adopted.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the frequency of information acquisition on the frequency of stock trading. The authors also examined if the Big Five personality traits of investor influence the association between information acquisition and stock trading behavior.

The authors adopted NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1989) inventory to measure the Big Five personality traits of investors and examined the data collected from 541 individual investors of the Chinese stock market. To overcome the potential endogeneity bias, the authors followed two-stage least square method for estimating endogenous covariate by employing instrumental variable analysis. The authors performed probit regression to evaluate the moderating influence of investor personality traits on the association between information acquisition and stock trading behavior. The authors also performed several other tests to check the robustness of the key findings.

This research confirmed the previous findings that the more frequently investors acquire information, the more often they trade in stocks. Moreover, the authors added to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence that the Big Five personality traits moderate the relationship of information acquisition with stock trading behavior. Information acquisition tends to increase stock trading frequency in investors with conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness traits. On the other hand, it also has the tendency to decrease the intensity of stock trading in investors with openness and neuroticism traits.

The theoretical model in this study seeks to explain that the psychological factor, namely, investor personality, influences the way an investor interprets signals from information which in turn influences the investor decision to trade in securities. This research suggests that psychological characteristics of investors can be of relevance for policy makers in their attempts to improve their business in the financial services industry.

This study combines both information search literature and behavioral finance literature to investigate whether or not the information acquisition that relates to investors’ asset allocation decisions is influenced by investor personality. The study offers new theoretical insights into investors’ behavior due to the characteristics of the Chinese stock market which are uniquely different from other stock markets in the world. No previous study has been conducted so far in the Chinese stock market to explore variations in the impact of investors’ information acquisition on their stock trading by the Big Five personality and this paper strives to fill this research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between personality, motivating factors and herding behaviour of individual investors. Investors’ personality has been classified consonant to the personality traits (compliant, aggressive and detached) encapsulated in Horney’s tripartite model.

To carry out this study, the author surveyed 363 individual investors of the Indian stock market using a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modelling is used to empirically test the relationships between personality, three motivating factors (cognitive capability, emotional factors and social factors) and herding behaviour.

The result reveals that, expect compliant personality, none shows proclivity towards herding behaviour. Investors possessing compliant personality are more influenced by social motivating factors; however, cognitive factor motivates aggressive personality, inhibiting herding behaviour. Furthermore, investors having detached personality are not influenced by any motivating factors of herding.

The limitation is the difficulty in generalizing the results to overall country populations as the Indian stock market has a huge turnover every day, and the author’s survey consisted of only small sample of individual investors.

The outcomes of this study could possibly unveil a new insight to discern the behaviour of individual investors in the Indian stock market.

The influences of personality on investment choices have been investigated before, but the influence of personality specifically on herding behaviour has not being adequately investigated in an emerging economy like India, as very scanty literature is available on the influence of personality on herding behaviour. The study addresses this gap and further explores the association of personality with different motivating factors that cause herding bias.