Bearish fears and bullish confidence: Financial awareness and technology growth reshape investment strategies in Malaysia

Tiew, Xiang Qi and Vincent, Tan and Teng, Jia Xin and Lim, Zi Tong (2025) Bearish fears and bullish confidence: Financial awareness and technology growth reshape investment strategies in Malaysia. Final Year Project, UTAR.

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Abstract

With online trading emerging as a prevailing norm, investors have gained unprecedented accessibility to investment opportunities and wealth management avenues. Malaysia’s accelerated technological development combined with the financial awareness of its population has significantly broadened the investor base, underscoring the necessity to evaluate whether these drivers have resulted in heterogeneous strategic adaptations among investors. Given that existing investors already possess established investment strategies, this study investigates how Malaysia’s technology growth and financial awareness on reshaping Malaysia’s investors’ strategies and further analyses the moderating role of market sentiment within this dynamic. This study employed purposive sampling to survey 395 existing investors which were randomly selected from three states including Selangor, Johor, and Penang. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 3 (UTAUT3) and Behavioural Finance Theory, this research aims to investigate investor behaviour by examining factors such as herding effect, habit, performance expectancy, and personal innovativeness in Information Technology. Additionally, the study explores the moderating effect of market sentiment on these factors among existing investors in Malaysia. The results indicate that all four independent variables have significant direct relationships with the reshaping of investment strategies and market sentiment only significantly moderate interaction with personal innovativeness in IT. Consequently, this findings expected to provide valuable insights into behavioural patterns which may contribute and affect to more effective strategies for engaging investors within the Malaysian financial market. Keywords: Reshape investment strategies; technology growth; financial awareness; market sentiment; UTAUT3; Behavioural Finance Theory; Malaysia Subject Area: HG4001-4285 Finance management. Business finance. Corporation finance Subject Area: HM1176-1281 Social influence. Social pressure Subject Area: T58.5-58.64 Information technology

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