Word-of-mouth effects in individual investors’ trading: evidence from Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the hypothesis of local herding (i.e. own-area effects) by individual investors on a particular stock-month. Using a unique dataset on online and offline individual investors’ trading records in Korea, we analyze buying and selling transactions involving 10,000 accounts from February 1999 to December 2005. We find that both online and offline investors in the same area tend to exhibit stronger local herding compared to investors’ trades who are geographically remote. Interestingly, online investors not only present stronger own-area effects but also exhibit more pronounced other-area effects compared with offline investors. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that gender and religious affiliation are important in investment behavior, with male and non-religious investors displaying a greater stock market participation in contrast to investors who are female and Protestant.