Ameriks John, Wranik Tanja. Emotional Intelligence and Investor Behavior

The advantage of being able to manage one’s emotions productively is not confined to such market timing. Emotionally laden decisions include how much active management to use, how frequently to trade, how concentrated one’s portfolio should be, how extensively to use risky or novel strategies, and — perhaps most importantly — how much to save and invest (as opposed to consuming).
Anyway, we should not be satisfied with our (admittedly sensible-sounding) guess that investors who can manage their emotions might perform all of these tasks better than those who are overpowered by their emotional reactions. We want data!
In Emotional Intelligence and Investor Behavior, John Ameriks, Tanja Wranik, and Peter Salovey provide exactly that. Having conducted a survey of Vanguard IRA and 401(k) investors, the authors show that investors who score highly on tests of emotional intelligence (EI) tend to exhibit behaviors (e.g. , the use of low-cost fund options, a decision not to trade too frequently) that correlate strongly with good investment performance.