MINISTRY OF EDUCATION TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ------------------------------- MASTER THESIS BEHAVIORAL FACTORS AFFECTING INVESTMENT DECISION- MAKING. THE CASE OF HO CHI MINH STOCK EXCHANGE (HOSE), VIETNAM. Student: Phung Thai Minh Trang Course: MBUS 2. Dinh Cong Khai Ho Chi Minh City, 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research would not have been possible without the valuable contribution of many people.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my great gratitude for their understanding, encouragement, and support. First, I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to my thesis supervisor, Doctor Dinh Cong Khai, for his numerous valuable comments and suggestions. I am very fortunate to have his supervision and his continuous encouragement which has motivated me and gave me confidence to complete this research. In addition, I would like to thank all of the directors and lecturers of ISB for providing me a solid foundation of knowledge, which has been not only useful for this research work but also for my future development in my social life and my professional career.
A special “thank you” to my classmates and friends for providing me with their honest and candid comments on my questionnaire as well as instant support regardless if day or night. All of this contributed to the succcess and the quality of the research. Furthermore, I want to express my appreciation to the managers and employees working at the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange and various securities companies, who helped me arrange the interviews and helped in the distribution of the questionnaires. I am also thankful to the beneficiary investors who participated in the interviews and the survey.
Finally, it would be impossible to say enough about my dear parents and husband for all of their understanding, encouragement, and advice which helped me to overcome the most difficult times in order to complete this research in time. Phung Thai Minh Trang Page: i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Although finance has been studied for a long time, behavioral finance, which encompasses human behaviors in finance, is a fairly new area. Behavioral finance theories, which are based on human psychology, attempt to understand how emotions and cognitive errors influence individual investors‟ behaviors (investors mentioned in this study are referred to as individual investors). The main objective of this study is the exploring of the behavioral factors influencing individual investors‟ decisions at the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.
Furthermore, it is related to relations between these factors and the results that they achieve. Since there are limited studies about behavioral finance in Vietnam, this study is expected to significantly contribute to the development of this type of research in Vietnam. The study begins with the existing theories in behavioral finance, based on which, hypotheses are proposed. Then, these hypotheses are tested through the questionnaires distributed to individual investors at the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.
The collected data is then analyzed by using SPSS software. Questions of the interviews with some managers of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange are conducted to achieve a deeper understanding of these behaviors. The results showed that there were three behavioral factors affecting the investment decisions of individual investors at the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange including representativeness, gambler‟s fallacy and over-under reaction. Representativeness and over-under reaction had positive impacts on investors‟ investment decision making, whereas gambler‟s fallacy had negative impacts.
Additionally, the behavioral factor of representativeness positively influenced the investment decision at the highest level. The results also presented that three behavioral factors did not affect investment decision including availability bias, Page: ii mental accounting bias and herd behavior. In addition, the paper gave some implications of study such as preference of investors for buying blue chip stocks, midcap and penny stocks as well, avoiding buying stocks with poor performance in the recent past or useful lessons of stock fluctuation, etc. Moreover, the paper also gave recommendation for individual investors in using behavioral factors with an acceptable level in order to bring good investment results.
Finally, it mentions limitation s, colclusion as well as further research. Page: iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iv LIST OF TABLES. vii LIST OF ABBREVIATION.