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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 34 No. 10 2010

How loss averse are investors in financial markets?

Soosung Hwang1; Steve E. Satchell2

1 Sungkyunkwan University · 2 University of Cambridge

Abstract

We investigate loss aversion in financial markets using a typical asset allocation problem. Our theoretical and empirical results show that investors in financial markets are more loss averse than assumed in the literature. Moreover, loss aversion changes depending on market conditions; investors become far more loss averse during bull markets than during bear markets, indicating their more profound disutility for losses when others enjoy gains. Contrary to most previous results, we find that investors are more sensitive to changes in losses than changes in gains.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2010.03.018
Volume
34
Issue
10
Pages
2425-2438
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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