Introduction

Stock Market is a place where a number of primary and secondary securities are traded. The
investors can invest in the surplus investment avenues available in the market to meet their long
term and short term goals. However the investors need to carefully examine all the aspects like
the risk and duration of the investments and the various aspects involved while investing in the
stock market. The investors with lack of knowledge and expertise lose their money while
investing in financial assets especially securities. As household sectors share is much larger in
the countrys savings. So, it is important for them to show them the right path to invest in
securities. So financial market is a right place to invest and earn higher returns as compared to
other investment avenues. There are various factors that motivate the investors to invest in stock
market. So it is important to understand what are the major factors involved in making their
decisions.

LITERATURE REVIEW:-

Grinblatt , M. & Keloharju , M. (2001) has conducted a research on all the Finnish investors
who trade from 27 December 1994 to 10 January 1997, both retail and institutional investors to
analyze all the factors that motivate the investors to deal in Finnish stock market i.e. to sell, hold
and buy the shares and to analyze the various behavioral and economic effects together and
distinguish their contributions to the trading activity. The stratified sampling technique was used
on the basis of which the investors were divided into odd and even months and then their trading
patterns were analyzed. And it was found that stocks with large positive returns in the recent past
and with prices at their monthly high are more likely to sell. Negative past returns affect the buy
and sell decision more than the positive past returns.

Dorn , D. , Huberman , G. & Sengmueller , P. (2008) has conducted a research in german

regarding Correlated Trading and Returns. To find the trade similarity in investors is same than
they would have expected, what coordinates retail trades and what role does correlated retail
trading play in price formation. The sample of more than 37,000 retail clients were taken and
random sampling technique was used to understand their trading patterns. It was found that the
retail investors tend to move together because of short-sale constraints and unmonitored limit
orders and also more to the speculative market orders. It was identified that trades are likely to be
undertaken for non speculative reasons (such as savings, liquidity, or rebalancing).

Merikas , A. A. , Merikas, G . A. , Vozikis, S. G. & Parsad, D. has conducted research on 150

respondents of Greek stock exchange to analyze that what are the economic and individual
behavioral factors that influence the equity investors decisions to invest ; are there homogeneous
clusters or groups of variables that form identifiable decision determinants that investors rely
upon when making stock investment decisions. The personal interview of the respondents were
conducted and it was found that that the investors mainly give more preference to the accounting
information of the company and then they also take into consideration the return they will get on
the shares which they purchase and then they rely on the brokerage house recommendations to
make their investment decision.

Ngoc, B. T. L. (2013) conducted the research on 300 respondents at the Securities Companies in
Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The data was collected from the target population through
questionnaires. The objective of the survey was to investigate which behavioral factors
influencing the decisions of individual investors at the Securities Companies in Ho Chi Minh
City. It was found that there are mainly five behavioral factors of individual investors at the Ho
Chi Minh Stock Exchange that influence their decisions: Herding, Market, Prospect,
Overconfidence-gambles fallacy, and Anchoring-ability bias.

Kumari, J. , Swain, S. C. & Thakur, S. (2015) conducted a research on 500 investors in Ranchi
by collecting the required information from them through the questionnaires to study the thought
processes and the perceptions of the investors of these cities and their challenges ; to know what
percentage of their income they like to invest in the stock market and also about the risk appetite
of different investors from different background. By using different research methods that are
likerts 5 point scale was used and statistical technique of cluster analysis was used through
SPSS. And it was found that the investors of this city mainly considered the risk more while
investing their money in the stock market as it will be more useful for brokerage houses to
cluster their investors on the basis of the risk appetite.
Dr. Sindhu, K. P. & Dr. Kumar, S. R. (Aug 2014) has conducted the research on 900 individual
investors in Kerala to know the periodic investment plans of mutual funds investors and to know
the duration of investment of mutual fund investors. Multi stage sampling was done in 3 Regions
(3 300) and then convenient sampling was done to select the units. It was found that the
Investment decisions of investors are very much influenced by financial consultants.

Rashid, M. & Nishat , M. A. (July 2009) has conducted a research on 300 retail investors who
invest in Dhaka stock exchange, Bangladesh. The random sampling technique was used to
analyze the components of market structure that contribute to the satisfaction level of retail
investors. It was found that the Investment analysis, ease of conducting transaction, information
and risk are the only four variables that affect the satisfaction level of stock investors in
Bangladesh.

Gupta, S. , Choudhary, H. & D.R. Aggarwal (April 2016) has done study on Efficiency of Indian
Commodity Market: A Survey of Brokers Perception. They took the 95 Brokers in MCX NCR-
Delhi for their research. The main objective of their study to know that what is the borkers
perception towards the recently introduced commodity derriavties in the market; to know the
reasons for non-investment in the commodity futures; issues that motivates the investors to
invest in commodity derivatives and to know the marking activities of brokers in the commodity
derivatives. They found a mixed picture of their survey. Some respondents characterize Indian
market as naive while others indicate caution. Retail investors are having a strong representation
in commodity derivatives market.

Parimalakanthi, K. & Dr Kumar, M. A. (December 2015) has conducted research on the

Investment Preference and behavior of Individual Investors in Coimbatore City. 107 customers
were selected by using convenient sampling techniques as target population to know the
investors behavior and what are the various investments avenues are available to the investors in
the Coimbatore city. It was found that the Education of investors is immensely important for
present day investors. The majority of the investors prefer to invest in saving account followed
by gold and silver, FD account.

D.R. Muthuswamy, P. R. & Devi, R. R. (Feb 2015) has conducted research on Investors risk
perceptiom and investors information seeking behavior on investment decision in Tamil Nadu.
Their target units were the investors who trading in Coimbatore Stock Exchange for at least
1year. It was found that the because of increased awareness regarding stock market the
population started gaining faith and investing in stock market and even the no of female
investors also increased. The investor also considers the risk and the professionals advices while
investing in the market for higher returns.

Sashikala P & Girish G. P (2015) studied factors influencing retail investors trading behavior
in Indian equity market to investigate the factors which influence and affect retail investors
trading behavior in Indian equity market and found that factors like broker's advice, personal
analysis ,financial analyst's recommendation ,inclination towards online trading influence and
affect trading behavior of investors.

Leena Roy Mallick ,Dr. P.C. Mahalanabish (2015) studied factors influencing investment
decisions of retail investors in Hoogly district of West Bengal to identify the factors
influencing the investing decision of retail investors and found that investors choose a particular
investment avenues to meet their future family needs ,to avail tax benefits ,for capital
appreciation and to cover risk factor.

Dr. Syed Tabassum Sultana, Dr S Pardhasaradhi (2012) studied factors influencing Indian
individual equity investors decision making and behavior to analyze and identify the factors
influencing the Indian individual equity investors while choosing a stock for investment and
found that there are mainly 10 factors out of 40 attributes which are wealth maximization ,risk
minimization ,brand perception ,social responsibility ,financial expectation ,accounting
information ,government and media ,economic expectation and advocate recommendation which
affects investors buying decisions.
Krutika Mistry (2015) studied individual investors behavior in Indian stock market to identify
preferred source of information influencing investment decision and to access the psychology of
investors in different market situation and to categorize the investors in different criteria on the
basis of their psychology like conservative, Opportunistic, speculative and It was found that
investors do not take decisions immediately but they try to understand the market first and then
react ,small investors are unbiased and not conservative about company events and are
opportunist about world economic events.

Dr. Kaushal A. Bhatt (2013) studied investment and trading pattern of individuals dealing in
stock market to know literacy and total awareness of current capital market among different
investment avenues and their potential market among the people of Jamnagar City and found that
factors like occupation, age, education does affect the investment decision of individuals dealing
in stock market and It was also found that new generation investors (whose age is less than 35)
prefer online trading rather than off line.

Suman,Dr. D. P. Warne (2012) studied investment behavior of individual investor in stock

market to identify factors effecting different investors and it was found investors give importance
to annual income and annual saving their level of income decides the level of saving and level of
investment.

R.S.Anantharajan , Dr. V. Sachithanantham (2016) studied role of risk tolerance in portfolio

management to understand the investor perception on risk tolerance and to find the influence of
portfolio investment detail on risk tolerance and found that avenues which expose less tolerance
are more popular among investors .These financial asset possesses moderate return with assured
return therefore it determined that the meticulous investors with periodic tracking of risk
involved in the investment always go for LIC Investments.

C.Kavitha (2015) studied investors attitudes towards stock market investment to find out
investors attitudes and perceptions towards stock market investments and to analyze how
investors level of awareness influences their intention to invest in the stock market and found
that there is a positive relationship between investor's attitude and stock market investment with
the more positive attitude enhancement strategies it is easy for local investors to invest in stock
market.

Dr. Gagan Kukreja (2012) studied investors perception for stock market :evidences from
national capital region of India to evaluate the factors influencing investors perception towards
investment in Indian capital market and found that variables like educational qualification ,tax
advantage ,past performance, occupation ,services of stock broker, age has a significant influence
on investors behavior.

Dr. PL. Senthil, S.Gopi (2015) studied investment behavior of individual investor in
Trichirappalli district to analyze factors effecting different investors in stock market and found
that market movements affect the investment pattern of investors in the stock market and reveals
that the respondents integrate the objectives of saving, the factors influencing the saving and the
sources of information for decision making.

Dr. Anil Nagtilak , Nilesh Kulkarni (2015) studied investors perception towards initial public
offering in Mumbai to find out the level of awareness about IPO in the investors and to analyze
investors confidence and their preference while investing money (whether investors feel that they
can make money in the stock market?) and found that large number of investors have shown
confidence in IPO and prefer to invest in IPO and they no more find IPO as risky investment as
SEBI is regulating the risk and financial aspects of the investors and IPOs gives return up to 10%
to 20% hence they consider IPO as good option for investment.
References

Jogongo A. (2014) , has conducted a survey on the factors which influences investment decisions
of the investors in Nairobi Stock Exchange. After this survey it was found that the most
important factors which influence the investors are reputation of the firm, price per share, firm's
status in the industry, expected corporate earnings. These are factors considered by the investors
while deciding their investments

Kavitha C. (2015) , has collected the data from 125 respondents by using the qualitative as well
as quantitative research method for analysing the attitude and perception of the investors towards
investment decisions. This study resulted into that there is strong relation between the investor's
perception of stock market regulations and intention of the investors to participate at NSE.

Kengatharan L. , Kengatharan N. (2014) , has conducted a survey to identify the behavioural

factors which influences the investors for making investment in Colombo Stock Exchange. They
had used the questionnaires for collecting data from the respondents and they used stratified
sampling and non probability sampling for collecting data. It was found that there are four
behavioural factors which influences the investors to invest in stock market, which are
herding,heuristics,prospect and market. From these factors heuristic is the factor which is having
high impact on the choice of the stock variable and herding has very low impact on the
investment decision of the investor.

Farooq A., Sajid M. (2015) , states that there are the behavioural factors which influences the
investors to invest in stock market. It was revealed that heuristics, use of financial tools and firm
level corporate governance has positive impact on the investors investment decision whereas risk
factor has negative impact on the investment decisions of the investors.

Bennet E ., Selvam M., Indhumathi G., Ramkumar R.R. and KarpagamV. (2011), have studied
the Factors Influencing Retail Investors Attitude Towards Investing in Equity Stocks. They used
the descriptive research and sample size of 100 retail investors and purposive sampling technique
to identify the various factor which affect the investment decision in equity stocks. This resulted
into that there are mainly five factors which influences the investment decisions of the retail
investors to invest in equity stocks that are risk, media focus on stock market, strength of
economy, political stability and government policies towards businesses.

Arathy B , Nair A.A. , Anju Sai P. and ,Pravitha N.R. (2015), conducted this study to identify the
factors influencing the investors investment decisions in mutual funds and to find the attitude and
perceptions of the retail investors towards mutual funds. They have taken 200 respondents as a
sample and used the snowball sampling and random sampling for the collection of data. The
study reveals that the major factors which influences the investors to invest in mutual funds are
tax benefits, high return, capital appreciation etc. There are other factors like liquidity,
diversification and brand image but the impact of the former factors is more than these factors.
Singh A.K. & Singh K.V. (2016), conducted this research to know about the perceptions of the
investors towards mutual funds in phagwara region and to evaluate the perceptions towards
mutual funds as compared to the other investment avenues. They used the descriptive and
exploratory research methods and made a sample size of 200 by using the non probable
convenience sampling technique. It was found that most of the investors are not aware about the
terms and policies of the mutual funds and they take the help of financial advisors to make
investment and mostly they choose ICICI for making investments in mutual funds.

Hussein A.H. (2007) , conducted a survey in UAE in order to identify the behavior of the UAE
investors towards the investment patterns. It was revealed from the study that expected
corporate earnings, get rich quick, stock marketability, past performance of the firm stock,
government holdings and creation of the organised financial markets are the factors which
influences most of the UAE investors to invest in Stock Market.

Dimitrios, I. M., (2007) , investigate the various methods and techniques used by greek investors
for making any decision regarding investments. Questionnaire and in depth structured interviews
are used to collect information from the respondents. The study concluded that individual
investors rely more upon newspapers and media, noise in the market for making investment. But
professional investors rely upon the technical and fundamental analysis for taking their decisions
regarding their investments.

Ali A. (2011) , conducted this survey to examine the relation between the individual investors,
financial performance of the company and intentions of the investors to invest in stock market.
The study reveals that people while making investments in stock market consider the company's
risk and returns and they are not influenced by the emotional factors for making investment in
stock market.

Research Objectives

1. To explore the factors that motivate the investors to invest.

2. To explore the gender differences across the trading preference.
3. To know their perception towards various investment avenues those are available in the
market.

Research Gap
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