Do financial advisors exhibit myopic loss aversion?

Myopic loss aversion (MLA) has been proposed as an explanation for the equity premium puzzle, and a number of experiments on students indicate that people do exhibit MLA. However, many people do not rely on their own judgment when making investment decisions, but obtain help from financial investment advisors on how to allocate their wealth. The preferences and choices of financial advisors are thus important for understanding investment behavior. In this paper we make use of 50 professional financial advisors to examine whether they exhibit behavior consistent with MLA. Indeed, we find that they behave consistently with MLA to a larger extent than students.