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The purpose of this paper is to introduce an evidence-based, transferable framework of graduate attributes and associated university toolkit to support the writing of level-appropriate learning outcomes that enable the university to achieve its mission to Transform Lives + Inspire Change.

An iterative process of co-design and co-development was employed to produce both the framework and the associated learning outcomes toolkit.

There is tangible benefit in adopting an integrated framework that enables students to develop personal literacy and graduate identity. The toolkit enables staff to write assessable learning outcomes that support student progression and enable achievement of the framework objective.

While the framework has been in use for two years, institutional use of the toolkit is still in its early stages. Phase 2 of the project will explore how effectively the toolkit achieves the framework objective.

The introduction of a consistent, integrated framework enables students to develop and actively increase personal literacy through the deliberate construction of their unique graduate identity.

Embedding the institutional Changemaker attributes alongside the agreed employability skills enables students to develop and articulate specifically what it means to be a “Northampton graduate”.

The uniqueness of this project is the student-centred framework and the combination of curricular, extra- and co-curricular initiatives that provide a consistent language around employability across disciplines. This is achieved through use of the learning outcomes toolkit to scaffold student progression.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the student managed investment fund at the School of Business, University of Connecticut.

The authors trace the history and growth of the fund and identify the special features and dimensions that have contributed to its success.

The operation of the fund is a constantly evolving program and the authors discuss the important changes and improvements made in the program since its inception in the early 2000s in response to growth in the number of finance majors, new career opportunities in the field of investments and most importantly, the strength of capital markets and the development of new instruments in the capital markets. The authors also discuss the common features of over 300 student funds in the USA. The authors close with a discussion of the limitations and constraints the fund advisors at, and possibly, at other schools, face in the management and administration of the fund, and also what developments and adjustments the authors expect to see in these funds in the future.

The authors combine extensive analyses of fund history and performance. The authors also provide some suggestions for the future direction and priorities for student funds.

People often face constraints such as a lack of time or information in taking decisions, which leads them to use heuristics. In these situations, fast and frugal rules may be useful for making adaptive decisions with fewer resources, even if it leads to suboptimal choices. When applied to financial markets, the recognition heuristic predicts that investors acquire the stocks that they are aware of, thereby inflating the price of the most recognized stocks. This paper aims to study the profitability against the market of the most recognized stocks in Europe.

In this paper, the authors perform a survey and use Google Trends to study the profitability against the market of the most recognized stocks in Europe.

The authors conclude that a recognition heuristic portfolio yields poorer returns than a market portfolio. In contrast, from the data collected on Google Trends, weak evidence was found that strong increases in companies monthly search volumes may lead to abnormal returns in the following month.

The applied investment strategy does not account for transaction costs, which may jeopardize its profitability given the fact that it is necessary to revise the portfolio on a monthly basis. Despite the results obtained, they are useful to understanding the performance of recognition heuristic strategies over a comprehensive time horizon, and it would be interesting to depict its viability during different market conditions. This analysis could provide additional information about a preferable scenario for employing our strategies and, ultimately, enhance the profitability of recognition heuristic strategies.

Through the exhaustive analysis performed here on the recognition heuristic in the European stock market, it is possible to conclude that no evidence was found for the viability of exploring this type of strategy. In fact, the investors would always gain better returns when adopting a passive investment strategy. Therefore, it would be wise to assume that the European market presents at least a degree of efficiency where no investment would yield abnormal returns following the recognition heuristic.

The main objective of this paper is to study the performance of the recognition heuristic in the financial markets and to contribute to the knowledge in this field. Although many authors have already studied this heuristic when applied to financial markets, there is a lack of consensus in the literature.

Stirred by scant regard for market phases in portfolio performance assessments, the current paper investigates the active versus passive investment strategies under the bull and bear market conditions in emerging markets focusing on South Africa as a case study.

Methodologically, the measures of Jensen's alpha and Treynor index are applied to the monthly returns of 20 funds from January 2010 to June 2022.

The results are enlightening; though they contradict developed market evidence, they are consistent with emerging market trends. The findings show that actively managed funds outperform the market benchmark and passive investing style under bear and normal market conditions. Passive investment strategy outperforms both market benchmark and actively investing style under bull market conditions.

In the face of improved market efficiency, increased liquidity and recent technological impact, the findings of this study have practical application. The study outcomes should inform and update global investors, especially asset managers interested in emerging markets; however, the limitations of the study should also be considered.

While limited studies consider market conditions when comparing and contrasting the performance of passive versus active investing, such consideration is lacking in emerging markets. The current study corrects this literature imbalance.

The purpose of this paper is to implement a genetic algorithmic geared toward building an optimized investment portfolio exploring data set from stocks of firms listed on the Nigerian exchange market. To provide a research-driven guide toward portfolio business assessment and implementation for optimal risk-return.

The approach was to formulate the portfolio selection problem as a mathematical programming problem to optimize returns of portfolio; calculated by a Sharpe ratio. A genetic algorithm (GA) is then applied to solve the formulated model. The GA lead to an optimized portfolio, suggesting an effective asset allocation to achieve the optimized returns.

The approach enables an investor to take a calculated risk in selecting and investing in an investment portfolio best minimizes the risks and maximizes returns. The investor can make a sound investment decision based on expected returns suggested from the optimal portfolio.

The data used for the GA model building and implementation GA was limited to stock market prices. Thus, portfolio investment that which to combines another capital market instrument was used.

Investment managers can implement this GA method to solve the usual bottleneck in selecting or determining which stock to advise potential investors to invest in, and also advise on which capital sharing ratio to reduce risk and attain optimal portfolio-mix targeted at achieving an optimal return on investment.

The value proposition of this paper is due to its exhaustiveness in considering the very important measures in the selection of an optimal portfolio such as risk, liquidity ratio, returns, diversification and asset allocation.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Fama–French common risk-factor portfolio investors herd on a daily basis for five developed markets, namely, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific ex Japan, North America and Globe.

To examine the herd behavior of common risk-factor portfolio investors, this paper utilizes the cross-sectional absolute deviations (CSAD) methodology, covering a daily data sampling period of July 1990 to January 2019 from Kenneth R. French-Data Library. CSAD driven by fundamental and non-fundamental information is assessed using Fama–French five-factor model.

The results do not provide evidence for herding under normal market conditions, either when reacting to fundamental information or non-fundamental information, for any region under consideration. However, Fama–French common risk-factor portfolio investors mimic the underlying risk factors in returns related to size and book-to-market value, size and operating profitability, size and investment and size and momentum of the equity stocks in European and Japanese markets during crisis period. Also, no considerable evidence is found for herding (on fundamental information) under crisis and up-market conditions except for Japan. Ancillary findings are discussed under conclusion.

Further research on new risk factors explaining stock return variation may help improve the model performance. The performance can be improved by adding new risk factors that are free from behavioral bias but significant in explaining common stock return variation. Also, it is necessary to revisit the existing common risk factors in order to understand behavioral aspects that may affect cost of capital calculations (e.g. pricing errors) and valuation of investment portfolios.

This is the first paper that examines the herd behavior (fundamental and non-fundamental) of Fama–French common risk-factor investors using five-factor model.

This paper aims to identify a possible mismatch between the theory found in academic research and the practices of investment managers in Brazil.

The chosen approach is a field survey. This paper considers 78 survey responses from 274 asset management companies. Data obtained are analyzed using independence tests between two variables and multiple regressions.

The results show that most Brazilian investment managers have not adopted current best practices recommended by the financial academic literature and that there is a significant gap between academic recommendations and asset management practices. The modern portfolio theory is still more widely used than the post-modern portfolio theory, and quantitative portfolio optimization is less often used than the simple rule of defining a maximum concentration limit for any single asset. Moreover, the results show that the normal distribution is used more than parametrical distributions with asymmetry and kurtosis to estimate value at risk, among other findings.

This study may be considered a pioneering work in portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation in Brazil. Although academia in Brazil and abroad has thoroughly researched portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation, little is known about the actual implementation and utilization of this research by Brazilian practitioners.

Across the world, many universities are dealing with a pressure on resources, caused by both organisational developments and ageing campuses. Space utilization studies have a strategic role, providing information on how space is being used, thereby informing decisions about the type and scale of facilities that are needed.

This study reports on the space use measurements conducted at TU Delft over the past five years, complemented by their use to make decisions about the university's real estate portfolio.

The education spaces of the university are found to perform well in terms of frequency rates and can be improved in terms of occupancy rates. The information helped to support short- and long-term decision-making. The study places of the university have a satisfactory occupancy in some types of study places, while in others there is room for improvement. More research is needed here to understand the relationship between space norms and space use.

The space utilization studies have supported discussions with the student council and decision makers on which interventions are required and which current facilities meet students' needs best.

Not much space utilisation studies are reported in the academic literature, and those that do have several limitations. This study may serve as a best practice for benchmarking by other universities and as evidence in other research for the planned and actual use of university facilities.

Investor risk perception is a personalized judgement on the uncertainty of returns pertaining to a financial instrument. This study identifies key psychological and demographic factors that influence risk perception. It also unravels the complex relationship between demographic attributes and investor's risk attitude towards equity investment.

Exploratory factor analysis is used to identify factors that define investor risk perception. Multiple regression is used to assess the relationship between demographic traits and factor groups. Kruskal–Wallis test is used to ascertain whether the factors extracted differ across demographic categories. A risk perception framework based on these findings is developed to provide deeper insight.

There is evidence of the relationship and influence of demographic factors on risk propensity and behavioural bias. From this study, it is apparent that return expectation, time horizon and loss aversion, which define the risk propensity construct, vary significantly based on demographic traits. Familiarity, overconfidence, anchoring and experiential biases which define the behavioural bias construct differ across demographic categories. These factors influence the risk perception of an individual with respect to equity investments.

The reference for the framework of this study is limited as there has been no precedence of similar work in academia.

This paper establishes that information seekers make rational decisions. The paper iterates the need for portfolio managers to develop and align investment strategies after evaluation of investors' risk by including these behavioural factors, this can particularly be advantageous during extreme volatility in markets that concedes the possibility of irrational decision making.

This study highlights that regulators need to acknowledge the investor's affective, cognitive and demographic impact on equity markets and align risk control measures that are conducive to market evolution. It also creates awareness among market participants that psychological factors and behavioural biases can have an impact on investment decisions.

This is the only study that looks at a three-dimensional perspective of the investor risk perception framework. The study presents the relationship between risk propensity, behavioural bias and demographic factors in the backdrop of “information” being the mediating variable. This paper covers five characteristics of risk propensity and eight behavioural biases, such a vast coverage has not been attempted within the academic realm earlier with the aforesaid perspective.