Investment behavior of short-term versus long-term individual investors of PAN India – An empirical study

Financial risk tolerance refers to the amount of risk a person is willing to take when making financial decisions. Previous researchers have found that demographic factors when used as independent variables to have an effect on the risk tolerance behavior of investors. Within this study, emphasis was given to gender and age within a sample of South African investors. Not much research on risk tolerance and demographics has been done in South Africa. Hence, an opportunity for further research within this field emerged. This study aimed to contribute towards the accurate risk profiling of South African investors based on their level of risk tolerance considering their gender and age. This study can be used as a future forecasting tool for investment companies to predict risk tolerance levels based on gender and age levels. Results from this study correspond to previous studies where male investors are more risk tolerant than female investors. A statistical difference was also found between male and female investors within the age categories of 35-49 years and investors older than 50 years. All age categories were found to be more risk tolerant for investors older than 50 years based on the binary regression.

A compensation fund is an effective mechanism for ensuring the protection of individual investors’ investments on the stock market, which confirms the experience of different countries both with the developed stock market and with the emerging markets (USA, UK, France, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ireland, Malta).
The formation of a steady interest of individual investors in stock market instruments is stimulated by the implementation of a mechanism for guaranteeing such investments. The stock market of Ukraine faces the problem of attracting additional financing, while individual investors have fairly large amounts of monetary resources that are not involved in the transactions with financial instruments due to the high level of distrust caused by the crisis phenomena on both the global and the national financial markets. The creation of the Ukrainian compensation fund for investment protection involves the development and implementation of a nationwide system for protecting the property interests of investors on the stock market, which requires compensatory payments to the clients of all professional market participants as a result of certain risks.
The main condition for effective functioning of the compensation fund of the stock market is determined by its size, which must meet the following conditions of optimality: to ensure the minimum level of the fund’s risks, to take into account the amounts of contributions for the current period, the amount of maintenance costs and to fulfil the requirements for the financial stability of the fund. A modified Markowitz portfolio model was used to build the model.
The building of the target function and constraints was carried out by using the Statistica software toolkit. The target function and constraints were presented as polynomials of the third degree and calculated with the help of the multiple nonlinear regression. As a result of calculations, an optimization model was developed for determining the size of the compensation fund taking into account these conditions.
The model’s testing was carried out by using the examples of the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) and compensation funds of the United States, Great Britain, France, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ireland and Malta. As a result of calculations we determined the size of the compensation fund, which guarantees a minimum level of the fund’s risk taking into account the amount of contributions for the current period, the amount of maintenance costs and requirements to the financial stability of the fund.

The purpose of the article is to determine the degree of financial interaction between the stock and insurance market, or, in other words, to determine the potential capacity of the stock market’s risk insurance sector for the Ukrainian insurance market. The authors examine the insurance not of all possible risks on the stock market, but only the most potentially important for the development of the stock market at this stage of economic development: insurance of professional risks of depositories and insurance of individual investments of individuals – participants of the stock market. In order to calculate the capacity of the stock market’s risk insurance sector in the context of the two above mentioned types, the authors apply the models that are widely used in the economic-mathematical analysis. For mathematical calculations we used 31 absolute indicators of the characteristics of the state of the stock and insurance markets, as well as some macroeconomic indicators. When forming an array of input data for mathematical calculations we used annual values of absolute indicators for the period 2005–2015 were used. For the adequacy of the received calculations the normalization of the selected indicators was carried out. All indicators were divided into two groups: stimulators and de-stimulators. The normalization of stimulator indicators was carried out by the method of natural normalization, and of de-stimulator indicators – according to the Savage formula. The capacity of the segment of the new type of insurance was determined by the authors as the maximum possible amount of insurance premiums that insurers can get in the process of implementing a new insurance product based on the current state of development of the insurance market. The capacity of the sector of the new type of insurance was presented as a function of the main component (an indicator that directly characterizes the created segment) and the corrective component (a set of indicators characterizing the segments created indirectly). The weight coefficients of the corrective component were determined by using the Fischer’s formula. As a result of the calculations, the authors obtained the data on the prospects of simultaneous introduction for the stock and insurance markets of such types of insurance as a professional liability insurance of depositories and an insurance of individual investors on the stock market.