Impact of Financial Literacy on the Behavioral Biases of Individual Stock Investors: Evidence from Borsa Istanbul

Financial literacy and behavioral biases are critical factors affecting the financial decisions and behaviors of investors. We survey 596 individual stock investors to measure their financial literacy, to examine their behavioral biases and to investigate the relationship between financial literacy and behavioral biases. Results suggest that around half of the investors have a low financial literacy level, their main source of financial information is advice from parents or friends, and they have a high level of behavioral biases. While some of these behavioral biases are independent of the level of financial literacy, there is a significant relationship between a number of other biases and the level of financial literacy.