Invidual Investors’ Behaviour on Stock Selection Decision: A Case of BIST

The study seeks to determine the main factors influencing stock selection decisions of individual investors in Borsa İstanbul (BİST). To achieve this objective, an integrated Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) method was used and a five-point Likert scale survey questionnaire was designed. The questionnaire included twenty one factors that belong to five categories, namely, accounting information; recommendations; personal financial needs, firm specific attributes and other factors. The results show that there are six most important factors affecting the stock selection decisions of individual investors at the BIST which are brokerage house recommendations, willingness of taking risk for high returns, get rich quick, opinions of the firm's majority stockholders, suggestions from friends and family and diversification needs. On the other hand, three factors were found to be the least influencing factors on individual investors' stock selection decisions. The least influencing factors in order of importance were sensitivity of firm performance to overall market performance, fluctuations/developments in the indices of the major markets, affordable share price.