Investors in the Bangladeshi stock market: issues, behavioural biases and circumvention strategies

Nazreen Tabassum Chowdhury, Nurul Shahnaz Mahdzan and Mahfuzur Rahman

Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, 2024, vol. 16, issue 5, 860-879

Abstract: Purpose - This study aims to explore the underlying issues of behavioural biases in relation to stock market participation and the challenges of individual investors in Bangladesh. The study identifies behavioural biases affecting individuals’ stock market participation, their circumvention strategies and the importance of financial knowledge in encouraging the participation of individuals in the stock market. Design/methodology/approach - Semi-structured interviews were used in this study to gather information from industry researchers, individual investors, brokers and institutional advisors. Twenty-two experts were contacted, and 13 agreed to participate in the interviews. The study then uses the thematic analysis method to report its findings. Findings - This research shows that investors’ behavioural biases (such as loss aversion, herding, trust, gambler’s fallacy and risk tolerance) are among Bangladesh’s primary drivers of stock market participation. Circumvention strategies (such as poor corporate governance and agency costs) also play a part in individuals’ participation. These influences are in addition to the obvious factors of investment risks, poor infrastructure, poor regulation enforcement and the need for more sufficient investment products. Research limitations/implications - This study conducted 13 interviews with expert subjects, which is a small sample size. However, the findings achieved saturation and cannot be ignored. Future research should use quantitative or experimental methods with a large sample size to validate the current findings. Originality/value - This study is pioneering in the Bangladesh stock market, exploring the behavioural biases of investors’ participation in the market. This paper provides valuable insights into investor participation by discovering the underlying behavioural biases that have been continually ignored; these insights may also be relevant in frontier markets in Asian countries.

Keywords: Stock market participation; Behavioural biases; Corporate governance; Bangladeshi stock market; Individual investors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:qrfmpp:qrfm-09-2022-0164

DOI: 10.1108/QRFM-09-2022-0164

Access Statistics for this article

Qualitative Research in Financial Markets is currently edited by Prof Bruce Burton

More articles in Qualitative Research in Financial Markets from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().