An empirical application for understanding investor's behavior who invest in the ISE stock exchange

ABSTRACTMaster ThesisAn Empirical Application for Understanding Investor?s Behavior Who Invest in the ISE Stock ExchangeÇiğdem ÇELİKDokuz Eylül UniversityGraduate School of Social SciencesDepartment of Business AdministrationFinance ProgramEach economic model that has been developed since 1940?s when economistsstarted to use mathematics mostly in economiç analysis until today has built up more rational people that the former one. People who have been stuck into economic models are defined as rational beings that are free from feelings and trying to maximize their usefulness.Finding gained in other social sciences observing human behaviors such as psychology, social psychology, social and social sociology apart from economic indicate that human has different behaviors than the ones supposed in economic models and they show different way of behaviors. In the points where traditional economic models are insufficient to explain what go around in the finance market, findings received in cognitive psychology have given support.These studies are called as behavioral finance. According to behavioral finance people have some cognitive partialities, feelings and temper influence human behavior and therefore people cannot make optimum choices all the time as foreseen in theory, in other words investment decisions are given on the basis of instinct and feelings instead of being rational basis.The aim of this study is to give general information about behavior finance and to determine behaviors and psychological tendencies of Istanbul Stock Exchange (IMKB) individual investors within the frame of basic findings put forth in literatüre.Keywords: Behavioral Finance, Investor Psychology, Investor Behavior, Investor Sentiment