A BEHAVIORAL APPROACH TO THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

The purpose of this paper is to reflect the behavioral biases that led to this global financial crisis. The paper presents briefly the real causes of the crisis (structural and cyclical factors) and puts a greater accent on the behavioral factors. The authors considered to structure the paper in three main pillars: behavioral factors, the collapse of ethical behavior and the role of behavioral finance in studying, regulating and assessment financial risks. The first pillar consists in a brief presentation of the behavioral factors such as: optimism and wishful thinking, overconfidence, greed, regret, pessimism, passing the responsibility, herding - groupthink, anchoring, representativeness biases, informational cascades and "this time is different" syndrome. The second pillar of the paper presents the collapse of ethical behavior that led to the global financial crisis: predatory lending practices, inappropriate compensation schemes, rating agencies behavior, corporate governance reforms and financial institutions opacity in their reporting. The third pillar presents the mismanagement of risk and regulations that led us into this global mess. The paper concludes with the need of integrating biases of human behavior into regulations in order to make them more effective and people become less financially vulnerable.behavioral finance, irrationality, regulation, crisis

NEUROFINANCE: GETTING AN INSIGHT INTO THE TRADER'S MIND

Much of the academic finance theory is based on the assumption that individuals act rationally and behavioral finances treats investorsâ€(tm) choice based by behavioral biases. In contrast, neuro-finance (as a blending of psychology, neurology and finance) attempts to understand behavior by examining the physiological processes in the human brain when exposed to financial risk. Scientists map the mind to learn how fear and greed drive the financial markets. The paper, will briefly present why neurofinance is important and how will be able to provide in the near future a number of effective tools for improved financial decision making.Emotions, Behavioral Finance, Neurofinance, Brain, Risk taking, Affect, Beliefs, Dopamine, fMRI

BEHAVIORAL BIASES IN TRADING SECURITIES

The main thesis of this paper represents the importance and the effects that human behavior has over capital markets. It is important to see the link between the asset valuation and investor sentiment that motivate to pay for an asset a certain prices over/below the intrinsic value. The main behavioral aspects discussed are emotional factors such as: fear of regret, overconfidence, perseverance, loss aversion ,heuristic biases, misinformation and thinking errors, herding and their consequences.Behavioral finance, Investor psychology, Irrationality, market efficiency, Behavioral biases, limits to arbitrage

SPECULATIVE BUBBLES – A BEHAVIORAL APPROACH

The purpose of this paper is to explain briefly from a behavioral point of view, the appearance and the development of speculative bubbles in financial markets. In the first part of the paper, we have presented the most known speculative bubbles among the history and the principal factors causing them (structural, cultural and behavioral factors). In the second part of the paper we have briefly presented the four main stages of developing speculative bubbles. In the last part of the paper we have concluded that besides the general opinion that bubbles make more harm to investors and economies, the human history has provided us the lesson that some of the bubbles have offered us genuine collective social gains: Apollo program, Human Genome Project and the Dot.com bubbles in the early 2000s. As some studies reflect, besides of the fact the some investors have lost all their money during those bubbles (Dot.com), nowadays we all enjoy the IT infrastructure realized with all those heaps of money that were frenetically invested in

AN INTRODUCTION TO BEHAVIORAL CORPORATE FINANCE

The purpose of this paper is to reflect the behavioral aspects that govern corporations. The paper briefly presents some of the main pillars of behavioral corporate finance: management, closed – end funds puzzle, dividends and the importance of aggregate earnings releases. The first pillar consists in a brief presentation of the behavioral factors related to the management of corporations, such as the fact that independent directors are not that independent as they should be, they do not have the prerequisite expertise for assessing complex financial risks, the importance of ethics and having a corporate culture that nurtures doing the right thing above anything else and the fact that CEO’s decisions reflect in good part, their personal style rather than a set of criteria determined by the company. In the second part of the paper, it is treated the puzzle why would investors buy a closed-end fund at its IPO price, knowing that it is likely to fall to a discount, when they could buy instead an open-end fund that is guaranteed always to trade at par and some mentions about the way that dividend policy may be influenced by managers “catering†to the demands of investors and also the effects of aggregate earnings announcements over the market returns

NEUROFINANCE: GETTING AN INSIGHT INTO THE TRADER'S MIND

Much of the academic finance theory is based on the assumption that individuals act rationally and behavioral finances treats investors’ choice based by behavioral biases. In contrast, neuro-finance (as a blending of psychology, neurology and finance) attempts to understand behavior by examining the physiological processes in the human brain when exposed to financial risk. Scientists map the mind to learn how fear and greed drive the financial markets. The paper, will briefly present why neurofinance is important and how will be able to provide in the near future a number of effective tools for improved financial decision making

BEHAVIORAL BIASES IN TRADING SECURITIES

The main thesis of this paper represents the importance and the effects that human behavior has over capital markets. It is important to see the link between the asset valuation and investor sentiment that motivate to pay for an asset a certain prices over/below the intrinsic value. The main behavioral aspects discussed are emotional factors such as: fear of regret, overconfidence, perseverance, loss aversion ,heuristic biases, misinformation and thinking errors, herding and their consequences