Social Meanings of Investing for Unqualified Investors

The aim of our research was to further extend the current knowledge of investing for unqualified (non-professional) investors. Despite the abundance of studies on investment behavior, the social meanings behind the actions of non-professional investors have been consistently overlooked. In order to identify the social meanings and interactions in the community of non-professional investors, we will search through public messages exchanged by nonqualified investors on a specialized social media platform, thus producing themes to be explored in semi-structured interviews with 15 non-professional investors to construct a grounded theory of social meanings behind investment actions. Hence, the informants provided not only economic but also social meanings behind their investment decisions. Constructed grounded theory of social meanings covers values behind investment actions, social aspects of investing and reflections on how non-economic values of investing have been held by non-qualified investors.