A fuzzy approach in exploring the style of investing of equity investors

Equity market witnesses a widespread of investing styles by retail investors. The present study is taken up to understand the investing styles of the retail investors of Tamil Nadu, in the equity markets, so as to facilitate the stock broking firms to enhance its retailing services towards its customers. A well structured bilingual questionnaire was constructed to extract information from the retail investors. Responses of 519 respondents were analyzed using Fuzzy Weighted Similar Choice (FWSC) method so as to find the dominant investing style. While analyzing the influence of investing styles among investors, it could be found out that 29% of the respondents are influenced by Technical style of investing, 28% of the investors adopt Index style of investing, 26% of investors are well aware of their risk appetite and follow Portfolio style of investing, 9% of the retail investors follow Growth style of investing, and only 8% of the investors are familiar with Value investing style. Hence, the Index, Technical and Portfolio styles are the dominant STYLE parameters which influence more than 80% of the retail investors in the equity market.