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The study aims to examine the relationship between personality traits and investor risk behavior of the individuals trading in stock markets. Furthermore, this study establishes the association of financial literacy on the relationship between personality traits and investor risk behavior.

The authors analyze cross-sectional survey method data by using moderated multiple regression analysis, a standard method of determining the moderation effect. PROCESS Model method has been used in this study to check the robustness of the results.

The findings reveal that personality traits significantly influence investor risk behavior and financial literacy modifies the fundamental relationships between personality traits and investor risk behavior. The findings also conclude that behavioral impact was predetermined by individuals' genetic traits and is influenced by financial literacy.

The current study provides valuable insights for investors and adamant grounds for future research. The two-fold role of individuals' personalities in case of gains and losses can be of interest to the researchers in future.

Investors currently facing the complex financial choices which are far beyond the day-to-day financial advice. This study guides rational investment behavior for portfolio managers and investors for advanced investment options.

Most of the prior literature is based on developed markets, whereas the current study focuses on less literate society (i.e. Pakistan) to protect the investors from scams and fraud. The current study supports the vital role of investors in the socio-economic development of emerging markets.

The authors believe this study expands the boundaries of personality theories, especially in the context of risk behavior and financial literacy. The study also contributes to advancing the personality theory trimmed with financial literacy and investor behavior while making important theoretical inroads for future research.

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.

In spite of an intuitive appeal regarding association between personality and investment efficacy, there is a dearth of empirical support for the effects of theoretically meaningful personality difference on intuitive and analytical ability, which further explains investment efficacy. The current study aims to explore this link using multi-method analysis.

In Study 1, the experimental protocol captures intuitive responses of naïve investors in four different investment horizons and maps the findings with personality constituents of the Big Five (Costa and McCrae, 1992), while in Study 2, survey of active investors seeks their preference for intuition or deliberation (PID, Betsch, 2004) in decision-making, along with measuring their investment efficacy and analysing the results on the basis their personality Type A vs Type B.

Subjects with lower extraversion tend to have superior forecasting accuracy for gold and dollar, while those with lower neuroticism have tendency of superior forecasting for dollar and Nifty index in mid-term investment. Further, in Study 2, the results indicate superior intuitive ability, analytical ability and investment efficacy of Type B investors.

The study is unique in two ways. One, it explores the role of personality in ambidextrous decision-making framework, where rationality and intuition iteratively operate in a parallel, yet synchronous, fashion. Two, the study attempts to examine the role of personality in the unique socio-cultural context of an emerging economy such as India with Eastern religious traditions, having strong implications on the personal characteristics of the decision agents.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of financial advice on investor trading behavior by analyzing the influence of advisor personality.

The study utilized the Big Five personality framework from Costa and McCrae (1992) to measure personality traits of advisors and examined the data collected from 314 stock investor–advisor dyads. Personality traits of advisors were measured by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1989). Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the fitness of the Big Five model. We followed two-stage least square method for estimating endogenous covariate by employing instrumental variable analysis. Probit model was used to evaluate the moderating influence of advisor personality traits on the association between the usage of financial advice and trading behavior.

The authors found that financial advice positively impacts investors’ stock trading frequency. The authors also provide empirical evidence that financial advice is more likely to increase trading frequency when advisor personality tends to be openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. On the other hand, information acquired from financial advisors causes fewer adjustments in investors’ portfolios when the personality of advisors is likely to be extraverted and neurotic.

The theoretical model in our study seeks to explain that a psychological factor, namely, advisor personality, influences the way an investor interprets information signals from financial advice, which, in turn, influences the investor’s decision to trade in securities.

This research suggests that characteristics of advisors other than those of investors can be of relevance for policy makers in their attempts to improve their business in the financial services industry.

Survey-based studies in finance are lacking. This study adds to the existing literature of behavioral finance that accounts for the observed variations in investors’ financial decision making explained by psychological factors. No previous study has been conducted so far exploring variations in the impact of financial advice on investors’ stock trading behavior by the Big Five advisor personality, and this paper strives to fill this research gap in Chinese stock market.

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 impact of the key sources of information, namely, financial advice, word-of-mouth communication and specialized press, on trading behavior of Chinese stock investors. The study also analyzed if the association between the key sources of information and trading behavior is influenced by investor personality.

The authors adopted the Big Five personality framework and examined the survey results of individual stock investors (n=541) in China. Personality traits of investors were measured by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1989). The authors performed probit regression analysis to evaluate the moderating influence of investor personality traits on the association between sources of information and stock trading behavior.

The results of the study confirm the previous findings that the key sources of information used by investors as a foundation of their financial choices have a significant influence on their trading behavior. The study also provides empirical evidence that investor personality traits moderate the relationship between the key sources of information and trading behavior. Financial advisors tend to increase the frequency of trading in investors with openness, extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness personality traits, and tend to decrease the intensity of trading in investors with conscientiousness trait. On the other hand, financial information acquired from word-of-mouth communication is more likely to enhance trading frequency in extraverted and agreeable investors, and is more likely to reduce trading frequency in investors with openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism traits. Finally, the use of specialized press leads to more adjustment in portfolios of the investors with openness and conscientiousness traits than those with other personality traits. An alternative mediated model was not supported.

This research contributes to information search literature and behavioral finance literature and provides empirical evidence that the psychological characteristics of investors are significant predictors of the variations in information-trading link. The study offers new theoretical insights of investors’ behavior due to the characteristics of Chinese stock market which are unique from other stock markets in the world. To the authors’ best knowledge, no previous study has been conducted so far in Chinese stock market to explore variations with regards to the impact of the key sources of information on trading behavior by the Big Five investor personality and this paper seeks to fill this gap.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the mediation effect of psychological biases, namely, financial risk tolerance (FRT) and financial overconfidence on the relationship between personality traits of individual investors and their investment performance (perceived) in the context of a developing financial market such as Indian Capital Markets.

The study uses both quantitative and cross-sectional approach to collect response from 983 individual investors through a questionnaire. The questionnaire had segments that were designed to assess their personality traits, investment performance and psychological traits. The personality traits were assessed through Big-Five personality inventory (TIPI), the psychological traits, i.e. FRT was measured through FRT scale, whereas financial overconfidence was measured through three basic concepts, namely, over-precision, over-placement and overestimation. Investment performance was assessed through perceived investment performance measures. The collected data was then analysed through AMOS and SPSS to validate the hypothesised relationship.

Findings of the study depict that personality traits of individual investors are related with their FRT, financial overconfidence and perceived investment performance. In addition, FRT and financial overconfidence are negatively related to perceived investment performance. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that the two psychological traits were found to fully mediate the relationship between personality traits and investment performance.

There are still certain limitations of the present study. First, the questionnaire pre-testing and sampling technique allowed for only for those investors who had an experience of investment in financial markets; however, the quantification of actual investment performance for each investor was impossible, and thus the actual investment performance was not determined. Second, this study focusses on the mediating role of financial overconfidence and financial risk-taking, as such it is known that levels of financial overconfidence and risk-taking depend on many other extraneous factors such as socio-economic status and financial knowledge.

The findings of the present study is useful for financial companies, policymakers as well as issuers of financial securities, who can keep a watch on these behaviour-related traits before issuing a security in the financial market and for the financial service providers; this study would be beneficial to design a “behavioural portfolio” according to the personality and psychological traits of their clients.

Through this study, the investors can recognise their personality traits and psychological biases and take sound and good investment decisions and can also maximise their level of overconfidence. This increased level of overconfidence will propel them further to actively and frequently participate in financial markets and make financial gains.

The essence of this paper lies in the identification of personality traits and psychological traits of individual investors, and their relationship with investment performance. Studies such as this are less prevalent in the context of a developing country such as India. Moreover, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is first of its kind to study the meditating effect of psychological biases in the relationship between personality traits and investment performance.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of sources of information on trading behavior by analyzing the influence of investor personality in Chinese futures market.

The authors adopted the Big Five personality framework and examined the survey results of individual investors (n = 333) in Chinese futures market. Personality traits of futures investors were measured by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1989) which is a shortened version of revised NEO personality inventory of the Big Five model (Costa and McCrae, 1992). Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the fitness of model. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the moderating influence of investor personality traits on the association between source of information and trading behavior.

The results confirm the previous findings that the sources of information used by investors as a foundation of their financial choices have a significant impact on trading frequency. The authors also provide an empirical evidence that investor personality traits moderate the relationship between sources of information and trading behavior. Financial advice from professionals is likely to increase trading frequency in investors with neuroticism and openness personality traits, and to reduce trading frequency in conscientious and extravert investors. Similarly, financial information acquired via word-of-mouth communication results in more trading in extravert and agreeable investors. Finally, information acquisition from specialized press causes more adjustment of conscientious investors’ portfolios. Theoretical explanations, implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

This study combines information search and behavioral finance literature to demonstrate that the impact of various sources of market information on asset allocation decisions is influenced by investor personality. No previous study has been conducted yet to explain variations in the impact of sources of information on trading behavior by the Big Five personality traits and this paper seeks to fill this gap in Chinese futures market.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between an individual investor’s personality trait and his perceived investment performance. It proposes a novel conceptual framework that integrates social influence (as a moderating construct) and outlines the role of personality in determining the perceived investment performance during the investment decision-making process.

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to collect responses from 396 individual investors through stratified and quota sampling approach. The collected data were then analysed using both hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation modelling to evaluate the strength of the relationship between the constructs, namely, personality trait, perceived investment performance and social influence.

This study suggests that social influence positively moderates the relationship between extraversion-perceived investment performance, whereas it negatively moderates the relationship between agreeability-perceived investment performance.

This study has certain limitations. First, this work follows a modelling approach which is more centred towards the prediction of relationships. Second, because of choosing a research approach (since the study has been conducted in one country, i.e. India), the results of the study may lack generalisability. Therefore, further studies could be encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses.

Insights from this study suggest that investors should look in for their personality traits while making an investment decision. In fact, psychologically modified portfolios should be developed as per the personality traits of the investors.

The study, perhaps, is the only study to apply social influence in a framework using Big Five personality traits as a possible factor to understand the individual differences in terms of perceived investment performance.

This study aims to examine that personality traits are associated with the investor’s ability to exhibit disposition effect, herding behavior and overconfidence. It also explores how risk-attitude can modify investor behavior by moderating the association between personality traits, disposition effect, herding and overconfidence.

Data were collected from 396 respondents by using personally administrated survey. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirm the validity and reliability of data. Regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results supported the proposed hypotheses and showed that extravert investors were more likely to exhibit disposition effect, herding and overconfidence. The conscientiousness trait was associated with disposition effect and overconfidence, while neuroticism was associated with herding behavior. The results confirmed the moderating effect of risk aversion on the association between personality traits, disposition effect, herding and overconfidence.

This study demonstrates how risk aversion modes the strength of association between psychological characteristics (represented by personality traits) and cognitive biases (disposition effect, herding and overconfidence). The results support the “auction” interpretation of investors' behavior by suggesting that personality traits are associated with investment decision-making and that investors are marginal price setters.