Mutual fund industry in India has been rapidly growing during the past few years. Presently, most investors prefer to invest on mutual funds as compared with direct investment in stock market because they realize this sector as safe heaven or more beneficial. The present study focuses on distinctive major factors moving the financial investors in adoption of mutual funds. Questionnaire with twenty variables and statements is developed while taking into account the recommendation of experts of the sphere and the responses from the investors collected based on the five Likert scale on the variables. Demographic profile of the investors is elaborated with frequency distribution and the results and discussion are made on with the help of factor analysis. The validity of the data is checked through Cronbach’s Alpha and pre-analysis confirmation for judging the correctness of the whole sample for sphericity is checked through Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test.

One of the primary concerns on most business activities is to determine an efficient method for ranking mutual funds. This paper performs an empirical investigation to rank 42 mutual funds listed on Tehran Stock Exchange using Sortino method over the period 2011-2012. The results of survey have been compared with market return and the results have confirmed that there were some positive and meaningful relationships between Sortino return and market return. In addition, there were some positive and meaningful relationship between two Sortino methods.

There are many evidences to believe that investors’ personal characteristics influence on their financial decisions when they purchase stocks, bounds, etc. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to study the effects of 20 personal characteristics on 52 managers of mutual funds in Iran. Using Pearson correlation test, the study has detected that seven factors including anchoring & adjustment, framing, over confidence, illusion of control, hindsight, recency and self-attribution positively influence on investors’ behaviors. In addition, five factors including consistency, self-control, loss aversion, regret aversion and availability negatively influence on investors’ behaviors. However, the study did not find any evidence to confirm any kind of relationship of representativeness, conservatism, ambiguity aversion, optimism, mental accounting, confirmation and status quo on investors’ behaviors.