Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11243.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fear and Greed in Financial Markets: A Clinical Study of Day-Traders

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew W. Lo
  • Dmitry V. Repin
  • Brett N. Steenbarger
Abstract
We investigate several possible links between psychological factors and trading performance in a sample of 80 anonymous day-traders. Using daily emotional-state surveys over a five-week period as well as personality inventory surveys, we construct measures of personality traits and emotional states for each subject and correlate these measures with daily normalized profits-and-losses records. We find that subjects whose emotional reaction to monetary gains and losses was more intense on both the positive and negative side exhibited significantly worse trading performance. Psychological traits derived from a standardized personality inventory survey do not reveal any specific "trader personality profile", raising the possibility that trading skills may not necessarily be innate, and that different personality types may be able to perform trading functions equally well after proper instruction and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew W. Lo & Dmitry V. Repin & Brett N. Steenbarger, 2005. "Fear and Greed in Financial Markets: A Clinical Study of Day-Traders," NBER Working Papers 11243, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11243
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11243.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mano, Haim, 1994. "Risk-Taking, Framing Effects, and Affect," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 38-58, January.
    2. David Hirshleifer & Tyler Shumway, 2003. "Good Day Sunshine: Stock Returns and the Weather," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 1009-1032, June.
    3. Andrew W. Lo & Dmitry V. Repin & Brett N. Steenbarger, 2005. "Fear and Greed in Financial Markets: A Clinical Study of Day-Traders," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 352-359, May.
    4. Mark J. Kamstra & Lisa A. Kramer & Maurice D. Levi, 2003. "Winter Blues: A SAD Stock Market Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 324-343, March.
    5. George Loewenstein, 2000. "Emotions in Economic Theory and Economic Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 426-432, May.
    6. Jon Elster, 1998. "Emotions and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 47-74, March.
    7. Isen, Alice M. & Geva, Nehemia, 1987. "The influence of positive affect on acceptable level of risk: The person with a large canoe has a large worry," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 145-154, April.
    8. Brandstatter, Hermann & Guth, Werner, 2000. "A psychological approach to individual differences in intertemporal consumption patterns," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 465-479, October.
    9. Richard H. Thaler & Eric J. Johnson, 1990. "Gambling with the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes on Risky Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(6), pages 643-660, June.
    10. Mano, Haim, 1992. "Judgments under distress: Assessing the role of unpleasantness and arousal in judgment formation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 216-245, July.
    11. Colin Camerer & George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 2003. "Neuroeconomics: How neuroscience can inform economics," Levine's Bibliography 506439000000000484, UCLA Department of Economics.
    12. Mittal, Vikas & Ross, William T., 1998. "The Impact of Positive and Negative Affect and Issue Framing on Issue Interpretation and Risk Taking," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 298-324, December.
    13. Anya Krivelyova & Cesare Robotti, 2003. "Playing the field: Geomagnetic storms and international stock markets," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2003-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yochi Cohen-Charash & Charles A Scherbaum & John D Kammeyer-Mueller & Barry M Staw, 2013. "Mood and the Market: Can Press Reports of Investors' Mood Predict Stock Prices?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-15, August.
    2. Dimitrios Kourtidis & Željko Šević & Prodromos Chatzoglou, 2016. "Mood and stock returns: evidence from Greece," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 43(2), pages 242-258, May.
    3. Shu, Hui-Chu, 2010. "Investor mood and financial markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 267-282, November.
    4. Adriana Breaban & Charles N Noussair, 2018. "Emotional State and Market Behavior [Bubbling with excitement: en experiment]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(1), pages 279-309.
    5. Lepori, Gabriele M., 2016. "Air pollution and stock returns: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 25-42.
    6. Narat Charupat & Richard Deaves & Travis Derouin & Marcelo Klotzle & Peter Miu, 2013. "Emotional balance and probability weighting," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(1), pages 17-41, July.
    7. Lepori, Gabriele M., 2015. "Positive mood and investment decisions: Evidence from comedy movie attendance in the U.S," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 142-163.
    8. Brian M. Lucey & Michael Dowling, 2005. "The Role of Feelings in Investor Decision‐Making," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 211-237, April.
    9. Fessler, Daniel M.T. & Pillsworth, Elizabeth G. & Flamson, Thomas J., 2004. "Angry men and disgusted women: An evolutionary approach to the influence of emotions on risk taking," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 107-123, September.
    10. Christopher Boyce & Mikolaj Czajkowski & Nick Hanley & Charles Noussair & Michael Townsend & Steve Tucker, 2015. "The effects of emotions on preferences and choices for public goods," Discussion Papers in Environment and Development Economics 2015-08, University of St. Andrews, School of Geography and Sustainable Development.
    11. Mittal, Vikas & Ross, William T., 1998. "The Impact of Positive and Negative Affect and Issue Framing on Issue Interpretation and Risk Taking," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 298-324, December.
    12. Nick Hanley & Christopher Boyce & Mikołaj Czajkowski & Steve Tucker & Charles Noussair & Michael Townsend, 2017. "Sad or Happy? The Effects of Emotions on Stated Preferences for Environmental Goods," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(4), pages 821-846, December.
    13. Baddeley, M. & Burke, C. & Schultz, W. & Tobler, P., 2012. "Herding in Financial Behaviour: A Behavioural and Neuroeconomic Analysis of Individual Differences," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1225, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    14. Andrew Worthington, 2009. "An Empirical Note on Weather Effects in the Australian Stock Market," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 28(2), pages 148-154, June.
    15. Lucy F. Ackert & Bryan K. Church & Richard Deaves, 2003. "Emotion and financial markets," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 88(Q2), pages 33-41.
    16. Ibrahim Bozkurt & Mercan Hatipoglu, 2017. "The Relationship between Parasocial breakup and Investor Behaviours," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 7(3), pages 87-96, July.
    17. Meier, Armando N. & Schmid, Lukas & Stutzer, Alois, 2019. "Rain, emotions and voting for the status quo," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 434-451.
    18. Dowling, Michael & Lucey, Brian M., 2005. "Weather, biorhythms, beliefs and stock returns--Some preliminary Irish evidence," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 337-355.
    19. John E. Grable & Michael J. Roszkowski, 2008. "The influence of mood on the willingness to take financial risks," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(7), pages 905-923, October.
    20. John Griffith & Mohammad Najand & Jiancheng Shen, 2020. "Emotions in the Stock Market," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 42-56, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11243. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.