Households and Mutual Fund Investments: Individual Characteristics of Investors Behaving Like Contrarians

We investigate characteristics of household investors stating they would increase shares in a mutual fund in a situation where this fund has exhibited a negative past performance. Hence, we investigate characteristics of investors behaving lite contrarians. We use a survey methodology to examine the effects of risk tolerance, perceived competence, and of being informed on households’ contrarian behavior. To investigate the stability of these characteristics we test our hypothesis in three scenarios: (1) scenario without consideration of market conditions, (2) bull market scenario, and (3) bear market scenario. Findings show that risk tolerance and perceived competence leads to a contrarian buying behavior. The results show that these effects are significant also in bull and bear markets, thus that these characteristics are stable. The findings further show that being informed explains contrarian buying behavior only when no consideration is given to current market conditions. Thus, this characteristic could be considered unstable.