Market Phenomena. Investors and the Disposition Effect

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Economy and Industry, grade: 1,3, University of Göttingen (Behavioral Finance), course: Bachelorseminar for Behavioral Economics, language: English, abstract: This paper discusses aspects of disposition effects in several ways and perspectives. There is evidence, that investors sell winners earlier and hold losers longer. Theories from mental accounting, prospect theory, self-control, decision dependent emotions, internal locus of control, and many more relate to the disposition effect.

After discussing them shortly, we investigate experiments in the laboratory and empirical evidence to come to the conclusion, that disposition effects exist for single investors and more pronounced for team investors. Tax considerations, automatic selling and decision dependent emotions change the proportion of how much investors are prone to disposition effects. The following mindmap shows an impression of the most important connections between the different effects.