The influencing factors on the investment decisions of individual investments: An example of investments in the Iraqi Stock Exchange

In today's intense competition, financial decisions are of great importance for both institutional investors and individual investors. Recent studies in finance show that Traditional Finance Theories, which are based on people's rationality, are insufficient to explain the events taking place in the field of finance. Behavioral finance tries to reveal how individuals' decision-making mechanisms are affected by social, cognitive and emotional prejudices. Behavioral finance was born as a discipline that takes into account human psychology and points to decision-making components that traditional finance theories cannot take into account. The aim of this study is to determine the factors that affect the investment decisions of individual investments. For this purpose, a survey was conducted on individual investors who invested in the Iraq Stock Exchange. The data obtained from the questionnaire were interpreted by using frequency and percentage analysis in SPSS 22.0 statistical program. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that there are many factors that affect the investment decisions of individual investors such as risk, financial crisis, financial information and herd psychology. Key Words: Individual investors, behavioral factors, investment decisions, iraq stock exchange