Correlates of Stock Market Investment

In this study, we were concerned with the correlates of stock market (SM) participation. In all, 1,202 working adults indicated whether or not they invested in the stock market, and which was split almost equally between those that did and did not. We were interested in the extent to which their demography (age, sex, education), self-assessed wealth, as well as personality traits predicted their participation. We used a six-factor robust measure of work personality (High Potential Trait Indicator). Correlational analysis indicated that the strongest correlation of stock market participation were wealth, sex, age, and trait Risk Tolerance. We then did a binary logistic regression which indicated that being male increased the odds of having invested in the stock market by 91%, and an increase of 1 year in age increased the odds by 3%. Ambiguity Acceptance and trait Competitiveness were among the High Potential Trait Indicator personality variables that were significant predictors of stock market investment. Implications and limitations are acknowledged.