Factors determining investment decisions in equity and mutual funds: A case study of Odisha

Mutual funds are financial intermediaries, which collect the savings of investors and invest them in a large and well-diversified portfolio of securities such as money market instruments, corporate and Government bonds and equity shares of joint stock companies. This facilitates to take the full benefits of diversification. Though individual investor's participation in equity and mutual funds is increasing in the last four years but still the participation of retail investors in the capital market and mutual funds is very thin in case of ODISHA when compared with other states in the country. So, the objective of the study is to analyse the factors determining the investment decision in equity and mutual funds industry. The researcher has used both primary and secondary data. Primary data has been collected from the respondents using structured questionnaire. Secondary data has been collected from sources like books, magazines, newspapers, websites etc. The study reveals factors like age, qualification and occupation, investment in equity, preference of equity over mutual funds, preference of mutual funds over equity and investor's problems influence investment decision of investors.