Money fractures marriages, drives wars, inspires art, motivates some people to great achievements, leads others to despair. Fear, desire, love, hate, jealousy, anger, anxiety, relief, shame and many more shades of emotion may attach to money in the course of an ordinary day.
(Photo credit: @Doug88888)Yet, economic accounts of human financial behaviour focus on reasoned weighting of information and the utility of different courses of action. Back in the mid-nineties, whilst working as a researcher at London Business School, I got involved in a major research project looking at the risk taking behaviour of traders in investment banks. We were struck by how readily and how articulately many of the traders talked about their emotional experience of trading. This triggered my continuing interest in emotions and financial decision-making as I moved to the Open University Business School. I continue to do research on traders but have also increasingly looked at private investors and at everyday financial decision making.
London Stock Exchange (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Most recently myself and Adrian Furnham collaborated with the BBC to produce the Big Money Test. In this series of blogs I plan to bring together some of the online and media resources I like or have been involved in creating and write some fresh material inspired by recent events and research. I hope to shed some light on what often gets missed by economists; the rich emotional relationships we all have with money and the financial decisions we make.
Links
Here are a few links to resources describing some of the work myself and colleagues have done in this area:-
- Our book on professional traders
- An iTunes podcast on Money and Emotions
Related articles
- Trading on emotion: traders, reason and emotion in financial markets (OpenLearn)
- A reckless love of money (OpenLearn)
- Behavioural Finance at Barclays: An Interview with Greg B. Davies (moneyscience.com)
- The Brain Man: Richard Peterson, Sentiment Analysis and MarketPsychData (moneyscience.com)
Emotional Finance 
Hi Mark,
I am glad to come across another blog related to the emotions of stock trading and investing. As a professional trader myself, I know the power of the key emotions that drive markets around the world, but most people underestimate its importance.
For what its worth, you may be interested in a blog post I just made regarding the 4 major emotions that drive all markets (fear, greed, hope, and regret). If you want to check it out, it is located at: http://deronwagner.hubpages.com/hub/stock-trading-psychology
Looking forward to reading more of your posts in the future.
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Thanks Deron. I enjoyed your blog post – which for me amounts to a good demonstration of why for many investor they should stick to time in the market rather than hoping to time the market. What are your views on the most effective ways for traders to manage their emotions?
Mark
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