Stock market forecasting is an important and challenging process that influences investment decisions. This paper presents an experimental design that aims to measure the influence of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic and optimism bias in these forecasts. The study was conducted using information from the S&P MILA Pacific Alliance Select financial index; this was presented to 670 students from the cities of Concepción (Chile), Cali (Colombia), and Lima (Peru). Data was collected and presented through an instrument that asked participants to make a forecast judgment of the said financial index, based on the presented graphics, representing a year, a month, a week, and the last closing value of the index. Thus, it was possible to measure the influence of the anchor and adjustment heuristic in order to establish whether the presence of an initial value affected the financial forecast. Similarly, the study sought to determine whether the judgment issued was biased toward an optimistic or pessimistic position, thereby proving the presence of an error or expectation bias, known as optimism bias. The results were analyzed using the least squares method, and the data panel confirmed that the anchoring and adjustment heuristic influences the forecast of the financial index used in the study. Similarly, the presence of optimism bias in the cognitive process of forecasting in finance was inferred.

Las finanzas comportamentales retan los supuestos de racionalidad en la toma de decisiones financieras, pues asumen que la forma en la cual se presenta la información determina la decisión. El objetivo de esta investigación es estudiar la influencia de aspectos como el nivel de avance educativo y el género en la toma de decisiones financieras. Para esto, se replica el experimento seminal de Kahneman y Tversky (1979) en 600 estudiantes de una universidad colombiana. La información recolectada se analiza incluyendo: a) el contraste de independencia c2, b) el test no-paramétrico Kruskal-Wallis y c) el test no-paramétrico Mann-Whitney. Los resultados muestran la aplicación de la Prospect Theory en la toma de decisiones financieras, revelando una independencia de las decisiones en función de las variables de agrupación utilizadas. También se encontró que las mujeres tienen una mayor aversión al riesgo y que el nivel de avance en la educación no influye en las decisiones financieras.

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