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Given the special feature of institutional investors in Malaysia, the purpose of this paper is to explore how these investors acquire and employ different information sources in their investing decisions.

The study uses self-reported information sources collected via a survey of 66 institutional investors following convenience sampling, and estimates the relationship via Smart-PLS (Partial Least Squares) path modeling.

The results suggest that although investors place greater importance on fundamental and technical indicators, they do not implement these information sources in their decisions. Rather, gathering information from economic statistics and ratios, discussion with colleagues, historical returns of the Malaysian stock market, decisions of other market players, specialized press and stock exchange bulletins, and statements of opinion leaders are more closely related to trading, risk taking, and financial asset holding. This finding supports the limited information processing of bounded rationality, irrespective of the type of information source.

Institutional investors should critically assess the information sources upon which they rely to collect information as irrational information processing may adversely affect the stock market efficiency.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the unique features of institutional investors in Malaysia in conjunction with their sources of information, and to identify which sources matter when making investing decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate who trade actively in the Malaysian stock market and what determines investors’ active trading decisions.

Using a cross-sectional survey on individual investors, the study identifies active and inactive investors and then, investigates active trading by estimating binary logistic regression.

Active investors in Malaysia are more likely to be male, working in non-finance-related sectors and are more experienced. The likelihood of active trading increases with the number of hours spent on researching investment, very short-term favorable unemployment and economic growth expectations (three-month) and past investment outcomes, whereas this probability decreases with higher cognitive ability and short-term unemployment expectations.

The results imply that regulators may focus on certain groups of investors, based on the result of this study, and provide them training to reduce inactivity in this market. As active trading in response to past investment outcomes indicate rational response, regulators therefore may inform investors to learn about their ability and skill from their prior investment outcome, through educational program. Educational program may also include the role of macroeconomic indicators in active investing decisions.

This is the first study to combine a list of demographic and socio-economic characteristics, investment characteristics, macroeconomic expectations and past investment outcomes together to explain the likelihood of active trading.

Despite a large stake of investment by retail investors and a growing number of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms coupled with the initiation of secondary market and strong regulatory framework, less is known what leads investors to trust in P2P (TP2P) lending platforms in a multi-ethnic country, Malaysia. This study aims to investigate the effects of individual characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity, education and income), social influence of P2P (SIP2P) lending and privacy of P2P (PP2P) lending on the trust in emerging P2P platforms.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect the data from retail investors in Malaysia. A variance-based partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) model was applied to examine the significant predictors of TP2P lending platforms.

The results show that while investors' income is positively related to TP2P lending platforms, younger investors are less likely to have trust on P2P lending platforms. PP2P lending platforms increases retail investors' trust toward P2P platforms in Malaysia.

P2P service providers are suggested to give especial attention to investors' specific characteristics to develop trust and attract investors to the platforms. Service providers need to ensure the privacy of potential investors' personal and confidential data to build investors' trust.

This is the first study to assess retail investors' trust toward online P2P lending platforms in Malaysia, where this alternative financing platform gradually gaining popularity.

This study examines how the importance of external investment environment factors affects stock market perception, and how stock market perception affects stock investments after stock market crash witnessed by individual investors in one of the emerging stock markets.

A cross-sectional survey was administrated among 223 individual investors who experienced stock market crash in 2010–2011 in Bangladesh, and the proposed model was tested by the partial least squares-structural equation modeling PLS-SEM model.

Findings show that the importance of Bangladesh's stock market performance, government policy, economic issues and neighboring country's stock market performance have effects on investors' stock market perception. This perception, in turn, decreases monthly stock trading and short-term investment horizon. The findings further show the mediating effect of stock market perception.

Investors need to carefully consider the external investment environment when they form their stock market perception, as this perception drives stock investments. Analogously, regulators should ensure releasing timely and updated statistics on external investment factors.

Addressing those investors who encountered stock market crash, a set of external investment environment issues, stock market perception and stock investments are new in the literature.

The purpose this paper is to investigate whether family affects financial outcomes and psychological biases in an under-researched context, Bangladeshi small investors.

To achieve the stated research objective, the survey data were collected from 223 small investors from brokerage houses in Dhaka and estimated using regression analysis.

The results indicate that learning from parents, discussion with parents about financial issues and father’s education have the strongest impact on financial outcomes (i.e. financial wealth holding, portfolio value, investment strategy, technical indicator, past perceived and expected portfolio performance) and psychological biases (i.e. herding, risk tolerance and better-than-average). Furthermore, spouse’s education, parental income, marital status and family size explain financial outcomes and psychological biases, but to a lesser extent.

The implications have been discussed for small investors and the family’s role in resulting positive financial outcomes and avoid biases.

This is the first study to take into account a set of family background variables influencing various financial outcomes and psychological biases in the context of Bangladesh.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among perception of past portfolio returns, optimism and financial decisions.

The relationships are examined using a data set of both retail and institutional investors in Malaysia and estimated using ordinary least square regression.

The results demonstrate that perception of past portfolio returns influences both retail and institutional investors’ trading and risk taking. Optimism measured as relative investment optimism and personal investment optimism similarly influences both groups of investors’ financial decisions. However, perception of past portfolio returns causes only retail investors to exhibit optimism. The results furthermore show that only for retail investors perception of past portfolio returns indirectly influences financial decisions, through the mediating channel of optimism.

The findings on the influences of perception of past portfolio returns and the mediating channel in decision process help to understand the differences between retail and institutional investors. Retail investors are found to be more susceptible to optimism. Therefore, regulators in Malaysia may enhance their initiatives by incorporating the peril of forming optimistic expectations in financial decisions, by giving special focus on retail investors.

This paper focuses on investors’ perception of past portfolio returns and its influence on various financial decisions, unlike past portfolio returns or market returns. Also, this paper is among the first to demonstrate the mediating channel of optimism in investors’ decision process.

The purpose of this paper is to test the competing explanations of stated preferences for firm characteristics, optimism and overconfidence for trading activities in a single framework.

A survey methodology is followed to collect the data among retail investors in Malaysia using simple random sampling.

The findings show simultaneous identification of stated preferences for firm characteristics, optimism and overconfidence as determinants of trading activities. Preferences for firm’s profitability characteristics, management and product-related attributes and risky characteristics are likely to decrease investors’ trading activities. On the other hand, preferences for firm’s liquidity and trading volume characteristics with relative financial-domain optimism, personal investment optimism and better-than-average aspect of overconfidence are likely to increase investors’ trading activities.

This finding implies that investors should be careful not only in assessing firm’s characteristics but also need to understand the effects of optimism and overconfidence in trading decisions.

The study considers various aspects of optimism and overconfidence, and the stated preferences for firm characteristics, unlike one aspect of these behavioral biases and indirect observation of preferences for firm characteristics. Furthermore, the study considers trading frequency, annual portfolio turnover and trading intention, whereas earlier studies considered only one or two of these trading decisions.

Despite the emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending in Malaysia, there is a knowledge gap on what drives the lending decision of P2P lending in the emerging Malaysian market. This research investigates how borrower's loan tenure, funding purpose, verified documents, accumulated transaction and repayment history, age, trustworthy and geographical resemblance affect likelihood of lending decision in P2P platform.

Using snowball sampling, survey data was collected from 300 online banking users who were willing to invest in online P2P platform from different states in Malaysia (i.e. Selangor, Malacca, Johor and Negeri Sembilan). For estimation, regression analyses were estimated.

The findings suggest that borrower's loan tenure and borrower's age increase the probability of lending in online P2P platform, while funding purpose of credit card reduces the likelihood of lending in the P2P platform. The findings contribute to the signalling theory.

The findings imply that borrowers need to concentrate on loan tenure and clearly indicate their age in the listing in order to increase the funding probability. Moreover, they are suggested not to submit listing for credit card as funding purpose.

This study is first in its nature about P2P lending in Malaysia and the possible factors that influence lending decisions in this new financing platform.

This paper aims to study gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics across various groups of investors in Malaysia.

Self-declared preferences are elicited through a survey of 520 investors comprising retail, financial professionals and institutional investors in the Malaysian stock market. Non-parametric (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis) tests are computed to achieve the stated objective.

Results reveal that female investors display higher preferences for the liquidity of a firm, dividend payments, trading volume of a firm, stock price and firm’s age than male investors across investor’s groups.

Findings imply that the gender gap in investing behaviour can be partly attributed to gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics.

The findings suggest that the gender gap can be mitigated by giving more priority to the choices of female investors with respect to firm characteristics. In turn, this may reduce a part of the gender gap in investing. Moreover, the findings would assist companies to understand and know how their shareholder’s preferences vary with respect to gender and investor’s groups.

This paper provides evidence concerning the gender gap in investor’s self-declared preferences for firm characteristics across retail, financial professionals and institutional investors in Malaysia, which complements previous studies that used equity holdings data and only two groups of investors.

Manufacturing firms must embrace smart technologies and develop complex leadership approaches to achieve sustainability. Using the dynamic capability theory, this paper aims to examine the influence of the adoption of industry 4.0 technologies (AT) and paradoxical leadership (PL) on corporate sustainable performance (CSP) of manufacturing small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. Moreover, organisational ambidexterity (OA) is a mediator and strategic flexibility (SF) is a moderator in the study.

The study is a cross-sectional, quantitative study design that collected 395 usable responses through a simple random sampling technique and a close-ended structured questionnaire. Structural equation modelling (SEM) procedures were followed to analyse the data.

The statistical outcome implies that the AT significantly influence CSP and OA and mediate with CSP in the presence of OA. Moreover, PL shows a significant impact on OA, is insignificant on CSP and mediates with OA and CSP. The authors found a significant association between OA and CSP; however, SF did not provide evidence of a moderate effect.

The findings of this study clarify the role that organisational capabilities (OA, AT, PL and SF) play in fostering sustainability. The authors suggest incorporating SMEs from different geographies in other sectors by applying diverse methodologies and relevant constructs.

The result injects new perspectives into policy, managerial and individual levels. Installing OA, AT, PL and SF makes SMEs sustainable.

The empirical validation of the influence of OA and AT on CSP and the interaction of PL and SF enriches the organisational and entrepreneurial literature.