Information sources and investing decisions – a path modeling approach

Given the special feature of institutional investors in Malaysia, the purpose of this paper is to explore how these investors acquire and employ different information sources in their investing decisions.

The study uses self-reported information sources collected via a survey of 66 institutional investors following convenience sampling, and estimates the relationship via Smart-PLS (Partial Least Squares) path modeling.

The results suggest that although investors place greater importance on fundamental and technical indicators, they do not implement these information sources in their decisions. Rather, gathering information from economic statistics and ratios, discussion with colleagues, historical returns of the Malaysian stock market, decisions of other market players, specialized press and stock exchange bulletins, and statements of opinion leaders are more closely related to trading, risk taking, and financial asset holding. This finding supports the limited information processing of bounded rationality, irrespective of the type of information source.

Institutional investors should critically assess the information sources upon which they rely to collect information as irrational information processing may adversely affect the stock market efficiency.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the unique features of institutional investors in Malaysia in conjunction with their sources of information, and to identify which sources matter when making investing decisions.