Understanding the Immediate Perceptual Changes of Investots during Pandemic Period: With Special Reference to Selected Sectoral Indices of India

Name of Author : Shounak Das & Priyajit Ray

Abstract: For last few months nearly all the parts of the world are under either partial or complete socio-economic lockdown. Though it has been associated with huge economic losses all over the world; still the human civilization could not locate any other more balanced approach to control the spread of the Corona Pandemic. The continuous period of lockdown severely impacted the normal operational and trading activities of nearly all types of industries, ranging from small to large and from agriculture based to service based. With the increasing probability of darkening of industry prospects in general under current situation; the investors’ perception also probably turns negative, if not remain unchanged. Investors’ perceptional variance can be deciphered through study of Index behaviour. Weakening of investors’ perception regarding prospect of any individual sector or industry as whole is a big problem for industries in getting adequate and cheap long term finance in future. So the researchers has decided to go for an in-depth study to know whether the investors’ perception turned negative regarding the industry prospects as a whole and in the case of some selected industries. Researchers have conducted an empirical analysis of changes in several BSE indexes’ values in pre and post pandemic periods by applying One-Tailed Paired T-Test for means and Wilcoxon Rank Test. It has been observed that general investors’ perception has already turned negative both in case of individual industrial sectors and for industrial sector as a whole. The researchers have pointed out the specific causes behind such perceptional changes. Researchers provided a set of recommendations for bettering the industry prospects and thereby improving investors’ perception. The study has also pointed out future research scopes in this area.

Keywords : Corona Pandemic, Index Values, Investors’ Perception, Socio-economic Lockdown. JEL Classification: C12, C88, G41, Y10

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