IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v92y2018icp168-181.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subjective financial literacy and retail investors’ behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Bellofatto, Anthony
  • D’Hondt, Catherine
  • De Winne, Rudy

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between subjective financial literacy, i.e. self-reported by investors, and trading behavior. In particular, we use the level of financial knowledge and experience reported in the MiFID tests by retail investors. Such tests are implemented in the EU from the so-called Markets in Financial Instruments Directive since November 2007. We show that subjective financial literacy helps explain cross-sectional variations in retail investors’ behavior. Investors who report higher levels of financial literacy seem to invest smarter, even after controlling for gender, age, portfolio value, trading experience and education. They trade more and are less prone to the disposition effect. They tend to concentrate their portfolios on a small set of stocks and achieve diversification through investment funds holding. Their trading behaviors allow them to display higher gross and net returns as well as higher excess Sharpe ratios. Our findings are relevant for both policy making and understanding retail investors’ behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Bellofatto, Anthony & D’Hondt, Catherine & De Winne, Rudy, 2018. "Subjective financial literacy and retail investors’ behavior," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 168-181.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:92:y:2018:i:c:p:168-181
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2018.05.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426618300980
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2018.05.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Desagre, Christophe & D’Hondt, Catherine, 2021. "Googlization and retail trading activity," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    2. Bernd Hayo & Kentaro Iwatsubo, 2022. "Who Is Successful in Foreign Exchange Margin Trading? New Survey Evidence from Japan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-14, September.
    3. Bellofatto, Anthony & Broihanne, Marie-Hélène & D'Hondt, Catherine, 2019. "Appetite for information and trading behavior," LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN 2019002, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN).
    4. D’Hondt, Catherine & Merli, Maxime & Roger, Tristan, 2022. "What drives retail portfolio exposure to ESG factors?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PB).
    5. Baeckström, Ylva & Marsh, Ian W. & Silvester, Joanne, 2021. "Financial advice and gender: Wealthy individual investors in the UK," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    6. Christophe Desagre & Catherine D'Hondt, 2020. "Googlization and retail investors' trading activity," LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN 2020004, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN).
    7. Hennig, Jan Christoph & Hullmann, Rieke & Rau, Holger A. & Wolff, Michael, 2021. "The hidden cost of profit sharing on participation in employee stock purchase plans," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 414, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    8. Brunen, Ann-Christine & Laubach, Oliver, 2022. "Do sustainable consumers prefer socially responsible investments? A study among the users of robo advisors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    9. Balasubramnian, Bhanu & Sargent, Carol Springer, 2020. "Impact of inflated perceptions of financial literacy on financial decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    10. Basha, Shabeen Afsar & Bennasr, Hamdi & Goaied, Mohamed, 2023. "Financial literacy, financial development, and leverage of small firms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    11. Baeckström, Ylva & Marsh, Ian W. & Silvester, Joanne, 2021. "Variations in investment advice provision: A study of financial advisors of millionaire investors," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 716-735.
    12. D’Hondt, Catherine & De Winne, Rudy & Ghysels, Eric & Raymond, Steve, 2020. "Artificial Intelligence Alter Egos: Who might benefit from robo-investing?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 278-299.
    13. Tsung-ming Yeh & Yue Ling, 2022. "Confidence in Financial Literacy, Stock Market Participation, and Retirement Planning," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 169-186, March.
    14. D’Hondt, Catherine & De Winne, Rudy & Merli, Maxime, 2021. "Do retail investors bite off more than they can chew? A close look at their return objectives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 879-902.
    15. Sun, Hongyan & Yuen, Desmond C.Y. & Zhang, Jiahang & Zhang, Xu, 2020. "Is knowledge powerful? Evidence from financial education and earnings quality," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    16. Gerrans, Paul, 2021. "Undergraduate student financial education interventions: Medium term evidence of retention, decay, and confidence in financial literacy," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Pendleton, Andrew & Robinson, Andrew, 2021. "Why walk away from an easy gain in wealth? Evidence from a UK stock option plan," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    18. Sonali Bhattacharya & Aradhana Gandhi, 2021. "Does India Want to Invest in Its Daughters: A Critical Analysis of Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana," Business Perspectives and Research, , vol. 9(3), pages 399-414, September.
    19. D’Hondt, Catherine & McGowan, Richard & Roger, Patrick, 2021. "Trading leveraged Exchange-Traded products is hazardous to your wealth," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 287-302.
    20. Marie-Hélène BROIHANNE, 2021. "Testing the gender gap in subjective financial literacy of spouses," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2021-08, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.
    21. D'Hondt, Catherine & Elhichou Elmaya, Younes & Petitjean, Mikael, 2020. "Retail Investing in Passive Exchange Traded Funds," LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN 2020013, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Retail investors; Financial literacy; MiFID;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General

    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:eee:jbfina:v:92:y:2018:i:c:p:168-181. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    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.