Effect Of Behavioural Biases On Investment Decision For Structured Products By Retail Investors At Nairobi Securities Exchange

ABSTRACT

The introduction of structured products to the Nairobi Securities Exchange, whose access previously was only limited to corporate investors, has been followed by mixed uptake of the investment option by retail investors in the local market. While the Fahari i-REIT Initial Public Offering at the Nairobi Securities Exchange wasn’t as successfully subscripted and only managed to raise one-third of the targeted KES 12.5 Billion subscription, the issuance of KES 4.2bn 5-year Equity Linked Notes by Centum Investment Company was on the other hand successful. The novelty of the investment option in Kenya and focus by the Capital Markets Authority to spur uptake of corporate bonds among investors therefore merits attention of analysis of effects of behavioural biases influence on investment decision by investors. The study investigated the effects of behavioural biases on investment decision for structured products by retail investors at Nairobi Securities Exchange. The specific objectives for the study were to determine the effect of herding bias, overconfidence bias, anchoring bias and representativeness bias on investment decision for structured products by retail investors at Nairobi Securities Exchange. The researcher used a structured questionnaire and collected primary data from 109 individual investors currently or previously investing in structured products. The research design that was adopted was descriptive cross sectional design as it aimed to investigate the relationship between the independent variable, behavioural biases, and the dependent variable, investment decisions. The two inferential analysis tools that were used included spearman’s correlation and linear regression. From this study, the findings indicated that anchoring bias presented a significant relationship with investment decision, while herding, overconfidence and representativeness variables presented insignificant correlation coefficient. There was a marginal effect of behavioural biases on investment decision making for structured products by retail investors at the NSE and therefore, the study recommends a review of the effects of the behavioural biases on each of the investment decision constructs to contribute to the current theoretical knowledge on the effects of behavioural biases on investment decisions. To policy makers, this study provides clarity on the need to educate potential investors on structured products and also on policy requirements for structured products to mitigate against the effects of behavioural biases by retail investors and encouragement investment in the sector. For practitioners in financial markets, the study provided clarity on how they can approach potential investors with the aim of convincing them to invest.