Research Hub
Understanding the research behind how investors think, decide, and behave in financial markets.
Understanding investor behaviour requires more than market commentary. It requires drawing on several decades of research from psychology, economics, and decision science. Financial markets are often presented as rational systems governed purely by data, models, and information. In reality, they are deeply human environments shaped by incentives, emotions, social pressures, and institutional structures.
The ideas explored throughout this site are grounded in a broad body of academic work commonly referred to as behavioural science. This research examines how people actually make decisions under uncertainty, rather than how traditional economic models assume they should behave. Over the past fifty years, scholars in behavioural economics, psychology, and finance have identified a wide range of systematic patterns in human decision-making, many of which appear consistently in financial markets.
Investors anchor to past prices, follow narratives, seek validation from others, and often struggle with loss, uncertainty, and social pressure. These behaviours are not random quirks. They reflect deeper cognitive tendencies that have been studied extensively across multiple disciplines. Understanding these patterns does not eliminate them, but it does help explain why markets sometimes behave in ways that appear irrational on the surface.
The purpose of the Research section is to provide readers with an accessible overview of the ideas and frameworks that help explain these behaviours. Rather than attempting to summarise the entire academic literature, the sections below highlight several key pillars of behavioural research that have influenced how we think about markets today.
Why This Section Exists
The ideas explored on this site draw on a long tradition of research, writing, and debate about financial markets and human behaviour.
Some of these insights come from academic studies. Others come from experienced investors reflecting on decades of market observation. Still others come from historians documenting the recurring cycles of speculation and financial crises.
The Library collects a selection of these resources for readers who wish to explore the subject more deeply.
Research Foundations
An overview of the academic disciplines that inform behavioural finance, including psychology, behavioural economics, and decision science.
Research Theories
A collection of important theoretical frameworks that explain how people make decisions in uncertain environments.
Behavioural Concepts
Specific cognitive biases and behavioural mechanisms that frequently appear in financial markets.
Taken together, these areas provide a useful lens through which to interpret many of the patterns that appear in financial markets. Prices may fluctuate for countless reasons, but the human behaviours that drive those movements tend to follow recurring themes. By understanding the research behind those behaviours, investors can begin to recognise the psychological forces that shape markets and, perhaps more importantly, the ones that shape their own decisions.
