Correlates of stock market investment.

In this study we were concerned with the correlates of stock market participation (SMP). In all, 1202 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 (HPTI). Correlational analysis indicated that the strongest correlation of SMP 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 one year in age increased the odds by 3%. Ambiguity Acceptance and trait Competitiveness were among the HPTI personality variables that were significant predictors of stock market investment. Implications and limitations are acknowledged.