Developing a hybrid multi-criteria model for investment in stock exchange

Article history: Received June 2, 2011 Received in Revised form October, 19, 2011 Accepted 8 January 2012 Available online 11 January 2012 One of the main challenges in Stock Market is to choose an appropriate combinations of various assets. The aim of this study is to propose a hybrid method, which is able to survey one problem with some criteria that it is very good for investment problem. In this study, we use a hybrid multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model, which shows the dependent relationships among criteria with DEMATEL method to build a relations-structure among criteria. We then use Analytical Network Process (ANP) to determine the relative weights of each criterion with dependence and feedback, and the VIKOR method is implemented to rank and select the best alternatives for investment. This study is in stock exchange in Iran to select the best stocks and the data are gathered through the years (2006-2010). There are a lot of methods to rank and select of firms that most of the methods just do one, ranking or selecting; but the used method in this study not only ranks the firms but also determines which firms (stocks) are best for investment, so that in this study 2 of 50 firms are proposed for investment. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.