Impact of education, age and gender on investor's sentiment: A survey of practitioners9

The field of behavioral finance lacks a homogeneous and structured theoretical framework. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to further systematization in the field by analyzing the impacts of education, gender and age on investor behavior and sentiment. The study is based on online anonymous surveys given to 106 professional investors active in the Spanish market during February 2017. The survey includes control questions, seven questions regarding investors' sentiment to elaborate a confidence index and twenty questions concerning the practitioner's view of behavioral finance. We first identify a gap between the relevance of behavioral finance and the lack of education in the field. We also find a clear misalignment between the investors and their clients' profiles related to their level of confidence. In that regard, the use of the institutional investor confidence index mitigates self-perception bias and is a key element in determining investors’ real profiles. Consistent with prior research, we find that female investors view themselves as more driven by rational analysis and are more risk averse while younger investors are more influenced by cognitive and emotional biases. As a key contribution, we establish a model to determine investors’ sentiment, which shows that female and more experienced practitioners exhibit higher levels of optimism and confidence.