K. Riyazahmed

Following the COVID-19 breakout, investment in shares, mutual funds, and life insurance are witnessing a growing trend in India. Hence, examining the determinants of investor preferences is necessary to maintain a positive trend. This study analyzes the impact of investor motives and awareness on investor preferences using the data collected from 753 Indian investors in 2020. Factor analysis grouped the investment motives into six categories, namely Nature of investments, Future financial needs, Investor personal characteristics, Safety and stability of investments, Investor behavioral aspects, and Investor’s options. The regression model used to find the impact of the investment motives and the awareness on the investor preferences explains 52.3% of changes in investor preference. Investment factors like Nature of investments, Investor personal characteristics, Investor behavior, Investor options, Awareness of mutual funds, and shares have a significant impact on investor preferences. Further, the awareness level of mutual funds and the stock market are the major variables contributing to Investors’ preference rather than identified investment factors. Investors’ personal characteristics like knowledge, confidence, ability, responsibility, and belief negatively influence investor preferences. This study adds to the existing literature by analyzing investment motives and preferences during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption in financial markets worldwide and impacted the performance of investment avenues like mutual funds. It has been a challenging scenario for all mutual funds to sustain the pre-pandemic performance. To understand the mutual fund investment scenario further, this study focused on examining the post-pandemic performance in the year 2021 of various categories of mutual funds, the significance of scheme characteristics in determining the performance, risk-adjusted performance, and outperformance of various categories of funds. Out of 4,305 mutual fund schemes, tax planning funds (58%), sectoral funds (57%), and equity diversified funds (55%) achieved better returns. Further, using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, the study estimated the effect of fund characteristics like scheme category, scheme type, scheme access type along with the fund’s tracking error and corpus size on funds’ return. The results show that tax planning, sectoral, and equity diversified funds significantly outperform. Tracking error significantly reduces the fund return by 4.52%. Scheme type, scheme access type, and corpus size were not significant. Equity, index, pension, and balanced category funds exhibit risk-adjusted performance, and only bond funds were able to outperform the respective benchmarks. The study adds to the existing literature by investigating the post-pandemic performance determinants of mutual funds.