A lecturer in the Accounting Department of the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) of the University of Islam Malang (UNISMA) managed to find an alternative investment during the pandemic other than stocks that are starting to be popular with the public. The lecturer and researcher at FEB UNISMA are Dewi Diah Fahriyyah SE MSA. She said that during the Covid-19 pandemic, many people were restless with their financial conditions due to declining economic conditions. This makes people more careful in spending money, and many even give up their assets and investments because of their declining value. But on the other hand, not a few people are taking advantage of the pandemic moment to look for investments whose value is falling. Even so, it still has upside potential in the future. Most people choose to invest in stocks because they are more familiar, and the government programs are increasingly introducing stock investment.

 

According to Dewi, stock investment is a very high risk, and not everyone understands this, so many people feel cheated when the shares they buy experience a price decline. This is Dewi's motivation to research to find other investment alternatives that are at lower risk than stocks. In addition, most studies during the pandemic were carried out to determine the effect of Covid-19 on the stock market and very rarely researched other investment instruments such as debt instruments or bonds.

"I use a grand theory in the form of a theory of financial behavior in this research. An investor in investing is based not only on fundamental and market information but also on psychological factors that influence an investor's financial decisions; this is what is discussed in behavioral financial theory, " he explained. The public's fear of Covid-19 is also a psychological factor affecting investors' considerations. Dewi added that this research also uses big data, which is now increasingly used in the digital world to make work easier.

This study was designed using an explanatory approach and tested by multiple regression analysis. Psychological factors in the form of fear of Covid-19 were obtained using big data originating from ((https://trends.google.com/trends/). Meanwhile, data on cases and deaths of Covid-19 were obtained from ourworldindata.org. These three variables were tested on investment instruments in weekly yields of Indonesian government bonds with a tenor of 10 years during 2020. The choice of a 10-year government bond was chosen because of the lower risk due to the certainty of yields from the government and the relatively short period. . The findings of this research show that the yield of 10-year government bonds is positively influenced by the respective fears of Covid 19, the number of deaths due to Covid 19, and the number of cases of Covid 19. The higher the level of fear of Covid 19 and cases and deaths Due to Covid 19, the yield on government bonds will also be higher.

This also shows that the government wants to reduce public anxiety over the government's financial condition by increasing the yield on government bonds. So that people can trust the government more. He hopes that the results of this research can be input for policymakers to pay more attention to the Covid-19 recovery and stimulate the economy to avoid increasing debt financing costs. The results of this study can also be helpful for investors to consider investing in government bonds, especially when Covid-19 fears are high, and to obtain higher returns with lower risk. Furthermore, government bonds are among the safest and most liquid assets in volatile conditions to be a diversified investment portfolio during a pandemic.

This research received funding from the Unisma Clusterization Grant 2021-2022. This grant is a funding program for Unisma where all lecturers are competed to prepare proposals that are in line with the Research Master plan. He was grateful that he finally got the research grant from a very tight selection process starting from the evaluation desk stage, proposal selection, and proposal presentation. The UNISMA research grant, of course, also has a target so that the output of this research can be measured with indicators that are in line with the indicators of the Grants competed by Research and Technology Grants Funding. "Alhamdulillah, I have fulfilled one of the output targets, namely the dissemination of research results at an international conference, namely the 4th International Research Conference on Management and Business in February 2022," she said.

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