Investors’ Opinions Regarding Decision-Making and Investor Sentiment: a Semantic Network Approach

This study aims to investigate the opinions of behavioral finance researchers, financial market professionals, and individual investors about the factors that can influence financial market professionals’ decision-making. We analyzed the answers from 10 behavioral finance researchers, 24 financial market professionals, and 26 individual investors to two open questions about cognitive triad and investment decision-making. We applied quantitative text mining techniques to the open answers and presented them in semantic network format. The main findings suggest that technical knowledge, economic scenario, and financial institutional governance are the main factors that influence financial market professionals’ decision-making in the overall sample. Fear, behavioral biases, and euphoria are the main factors of the cognitive triad described as capable of influencing financial market professionals’ decision-making. However, there are divergences between the factors suggested by each group. We discuss and compare each of the main factors reported with findings from previous studies. Furthermore, our results indicate that when questioning which factors can influence the financial market professionals’ decision-making, psychological factors are not the first to come to mind of market players. This may indicate the need for psychoeducational interventions inside financial institutions aimed at the importance and impacts of psychological factors during professionals’ investment decision-making.