The effects of behavioural factors in investment decision-making: a survey of institutional investors operating at the Nairobi Stock Exchange

Abstract

This study investigated the role of behavioural finance and investor psychology in investment decision-making at the Nairobi Stock Exchange with special reference to institutional investors. Using a sample of 23 institutional investors, the study established that behavioural factors such as representativeness, overconfidence, anchoring, gambler's fallacy, availability bias, loss aversion, regret aversion and mental accounting affected the decisions of the institutional investors operating at the NSE. Moreover, these investors made reference to the trading activity of the other institutional investors and often exhibited an institutional-herding behaviour in their investment decision-making.