Why retail investors traded equity during the pandemic? An application of artificial neural networks to examine behavioral biases

Behavioral biases are known to influence the investment decisions of retail investors. Indeed, extant research has revealed interesting findings in this regard. However, the literature on the impact of these biases on millennials' trading activity, particularly during a health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the equity recommendation intentions of such investors, is limited. The present study addressed these gaps by investigating the influence of eight behavioral biases: overconfidence and self-attribution, over-optimism, hindsight, representativeness, anchoring, loss aversion, mental accounting, and herding on the trading activity and recommendation intentions of millennials …