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This paper aims to identify changes in individual investors’ preferences, prominent sentiments in the market, behavioural tendencies and biases demonstrated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the study is exploratory social research, the design is also structured as such. In total, 69 Securities and Exchange Board of India-registered investment advisors catering to investors of diverse profiles, experiences and locales are engaged through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The responses are categorised thematically using a data structure model.

Investors are guided by an inclination for safer and liquid asset classes and prefer fixed income securities. The authors observe various emotional reactions – inexperienced investors panic, experienced investors act maturely, while a few of both naïve and sophisticated investors are opportunistic contrarians. Lower valuations, ease of access to digital infrastructure for trading and social norms attract many first-time individual investors, causing a phenomenon identified as the “new investor boom”. Apart from the biases identified during the financial crisis, the authors also detect evidence of cognitive dissonance, bandwagon effect, fear-of-missing-out syndrome, disposition effect and others.

The paper also discusses some noticeable behavioural tendencies displayed by the individual investors and compiles helpful strategies to successfully navigate any such financial crisis.

An individual investor is a least aware and most affected stakeholder in any crisis, so this study contributes newer insights to ensure their financial well-being.

The study’s originality lies in adopting a qualitative methodology that uses investment advisors’ professional experience to unveil the sub-structures of investor psychology and decision-making behaviour during COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence the behavioral biases in Indian investors specifically, overconfidence, excessive optimism (pessimism), herd behavior and the disposition effect. It further investigates the role of demographics and investor sophistication in influencing the biases. Finally, it reveals which bias is most prevalent in the Indian context.

For this purpose, a survey has been conducted on the investors of the Delhi/NCR area. The data have been collected with the help of a structured questionnaire that is analyzed with the help of relevant statistical tools.

The survey evidence shows that behavioral biases are dependent on investors’ demographics and their trading sophistication with highest influencing factors being age, profession and trading frequency. Each bias corresponds to a specific set of investor characteristics and overconfidence comes out to be the most important bias in the Indian context.

The potential limitations of the present survey can be ascribed to socially desirable responses and their difference with actual market behavior. Further, due to time and resource constraint, the data set is limited to investors of only Delhi/NCR.

This study is most relevant for financial advisors, as it facilitates them in gaining a better understanding of their clients’ psychology. It can aid them in developing behaviorally modified portfolio, which best suits their clients’ predisposition.

The paper gives a unique insight on the investors’ profile corresponding to each bias under consideration. It not only updates the evidence on behavioral biases but also highlights which bias is the most influential in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the presence and impact of optimism in the Indian equity market.

The data set comprises the daily values of the Nifty 50 index, index options and Treasury-bill index for a period of five years (2006-2011). The focus of this paper is two pronged. It first investigates the presence of optimism (pessimism) using the pricing kernel technique suggested by Barone-Adesi et al. (2012). Second, it tries to analyze the relationship of this bias with stock market indicators like risk premium, market return and volatility using time series regression.

The findings indicate that the Indian equity market has been predominantly pessimistic from the period 2006 to 2011. The interaction of this bias with market indicators also unveils some interesting insights. The study shows that high past volatility can lead to pessimism in the Indian equity market and vice versa. It further explores that when the investors are rational, their risk and return relationship is positive while it tends to be negative when they are irrational. The impact of investors’ irrationalities on asset valuation has also been accounted by Brown and Cliff (2005).

The findings of the paper have significant implications for fund managers and asset management companies. It is recommended that they should try to identify behavioral biases in their clients before designing their portfolios.

This study is one of the very few attempts to capture the presence and impact optimism (pessimism) in the Indian equity market.