A STUDY ON INVESTORS' OVERCONFIDENCE IN TRADING ACTIVITIES THROUGH SOCIAL PLATFORMS

The rapid democratization of financial markets, accelerated by the proliferation of digital social plat-forms, has fundamentally transformed individual trading behavior. This paper systematically investi-gates the phenomenon of investor overconfidence induced by social media consumption. Utilizing a quantitative survey methodology with a robust sample of N = 350 retail investors, we examine how interaction metrics, algorithmic echo chambers, and community-driven confirmation bias influence risk perception, miscalibration, and trading frequency. Our empirical analysis utilizes descriptive statistics, correlation matrices, and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to perform rigorous hypothesis testing. The results reveal a highly significant positive relationship between the intensity of financial social media consumption and investor overconfidence metrics (β = 0.412, p < 0.001). Furthermore, empirical validation demonstrates that overconfident traders execute a substantially higher volume of transactions while simultaneously realizing suboptimal risk-adjusted returns. These findings contribute novel empirical insights to behavioral finance literature, highlighting structural psychological hazards within modern peer-to-peer retail financial ecosystems.