Analysis of the change in the perceived risk of financial market investors

Because the expansion in housing sector, which had started in 2001 and continued until 2006, caused a global financial crisis in 2008 and because the subprime mortgage credits and the asset-backed securities play big roles in the crisis, again attentions are attracted by one of the two parameters of investment decision; the risk concept.The main purpose of this study was to examine the risk level that individual investors took eventually as a result of their perception of risks, in other words, the socio-economic and demographic factors and psychological factors that affect risk taking attitude.In accordance with this purpose, firstly it was searched that whether any difference of risk taking attitude existed between groups with various socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Then, any difference in level of being exposed to various psychological and emotional factors that existed between gender groups was searched. Finally, the relationships between the risk taking attitude as the dependent variable and psychological factors as the independent variables were examined.As a result of the study conducted in that frame, it was found that that were significant differences in risk taking attitudes between the groups with some demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Furthermore, it was found that some psychological factors were affective on individual invertors? risk taking attitude and there were differences in the level of being affected by those factors between female and male investors.