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Abstract:
We test and confirm the hypothesis that individual investors are net buyers of attention-grabbing stocks, e.g., stocks in the news, stocks experiencing high abnormal trading volume, and stocks with extreme one day returns. Attention-driven buying results from the difficulty that investors have searching the thousands of stocks they can potentially buy. Individual investors don't face the same search problem when selling because they tend to sell only stocks they already own. We hypothesize that many investors only consider purchasing stocks that have first caught their attention. Thus, preferences determine choices after attention has determined the choice set.

attention, news, investor behavior, individual investors, behavioral finance, behavioral biases

Abstract:
We study the trading behavior of individual investors using the Trade and Quotes (TAQ) and Institute for the Study of Security Markets (ISSM) transaction data over the period 1983 to 2001. We document four results: (1) Order imbalance based on buyer- and sellerinitiated small trades from the TAQ/ISSM data correlates well with the order imbalance based on trades of individual investors from brokerage firm data. This indicates trade size is a reasonable proxy for the trading of individual investors. (2) Order imbalance based on TAQ/ISSM data indicates strong herding by individual investors. Individual investors predominantly buy (sell) the same stocks as each other contemporaneously. Furthermore, they predominantly buy (sell) the same stocks one week (month) as they did the previous week (month). (3) When measured over one year, the imbalance between purchases and sales of each stock by individual investors forecasts cross-sectional stock returns the subsequent year. Stocks heavily bought by individuals one year underperform stocks heavily sold by 4.4 percentage points in the following year. For stocks for which it is most difficult to arbitrage mispricings, the spread in returns between stocks bought and stocks sold is 13.1 percentage points the following year. (4) Over shorter periods such as a week or a month, a different pattern emerges. Stocks heavily bought by individual investors one week earn strong returns in the subsequent week, while stocks heavily sold one week earn poor returns in the subsequent week. This pattern persists for a total of three to four weeks and then reverses for the subsequent several weeks. In addition to examining the ability of small trades to forecast returns, we also look at the predictive value of large trades. In striking contrast to our small trade results, we find that stocks heavily purchased with large trades one week earn poor returns in the subsequent week, while stocks heavily sold one week earn strong returns in the subsequent week.

Behavioral Finance, Asset Pricing, Market Efficiency

Abstract:
Modern financial economics assumes that we behave with extreme rationality but we do not. Furthermore, our deviations from rationality are often systematic. Behavioral finance relaxes the traditional assumptions of financial economics by incorporating these observable, systematic, and very human departures from rationality into standard models of financial markets. This paper describes empirical tests of two predictions of behavioral finance: that investors tend to sell their winning stocks and to hold on to their losers and that, as a result of overconfidence, investors trade too much.

Statman and Shefrin (1985) predict that investors will sell their winning investments too soon and hold on to their losers too long. They dub this tendency the disposition effect. Using account data from a large discount broker, we document that individual investors are 50 percent more likely to sell a winning investment than a losing investment (relative to their opportunities to do so). The analysis also indicates that many investors engage in tax-motivated selling, especially in December. Alternative explanations have been proposed for why investors might realize their profitable investments while retaining their losing investments. Investors may rationally, or irrationally, believe that their current losers will in the future outperform their current winners. They may sell winners to rebalance their portfolios. Or they may refrain from selling losers due to the higher transactions costs of trading at lower prices. When the data are controlled for rebalancing and for share price, the disposition effect is still observed. And the winning investments that investors choose to sell continue in subsequent months to outperform the losers they keep. This investment behavior is difficult to justify rationally; it is pure folly in an investor?s taxable account.

It is difficult to reconcile the volume of trading observed in equity markets with the trading needs of rational investors. Rational investors make periodic contributions and withdrawals from their investment portfolios, rebalance their portfolios, and trade to minimize their taxes. Those possessed of superior information may trade speculatively, though rational speculative traders will generally not choose to trade with each other. It is unlikely that rational trading needs account for a turnover rate of 76 percent on the New York Stock Exchange in 1998. We believe there is a simple and powerful explanation for high levels of trading on financial markets: overconfidence.

Human beings are overconfident about their abilities, their knowledge, and their future prospects. Odean (1998b) shows that overconfident investors trade more than rational investors and that doing so lowers their expected utilities. Greater overconfidence leads to greater trading and to lower expected utility.

We present evidence that the average individual investor pays an extremely large performance penalty for trading. Those investors who trade most actively earn, on average, the lowest returns. And the stocks individual investors purchase do not outperform those they sell by enough to even cover the costs of trading. In fact, the stocks individual investors purchase, on average, subsequently underperform those they sell. This is the case even when trading is not apparently motivated by liquidity demands, tax-loss selling, portfolio rebalancing, or a move to lower-risk stocks.

Our common psychological heritage insures that we systematically share decision biases that can lead to suboptimal investment behavior. Overconfidence provides the will to act on these biases. It gives us the courage of our misguided convictions.

Abstract:
Modern financial economics assumes that we behave with extreme rationality but we do not. Furthermore, our deviations from rationality are often systematic. Behavioral finance relaxes the traditional assumptions of financial economics by incorporating these observable, systematic, and very human departures from rationality into standard models of financial markets. This paper describes empirical tests of two predictions of behavioral finance: that investors tend to sell their winning stocks and to hold on to their losers and that, as a result of overconfidence, investors trade too much.

Statman and Shefrin (1985) predict that investors will sell their winning investments too soon and hold on to their losers too long. They dub this tendency the disposition effect. Using account data from a large discount broker, we document that individual investors are 50 percent more likely to sell a winning investment than a losing investment (relative to their opportunities to do so). The analysis also indicates that many investors engage in tax-motivated selling, especially in December. Alternative explanations have been proposed for why investors might realize their profitable investments while retaining their losing investments. Investors may rationally, or irrationally, believe that their current losers will in the future outperform their current winners. They may sell winners to rebalance their portfolios. Or they may refrain from selling losers due to the higher transactions costs of trading at lower prices. When the data are controlled for rebalancing and for share price, the disposition effect is still observed. And the winning investments that investors choose to sell continue in subsequent months to outperform the losers they keep. This investment behavior is difficult to justify rationally; it is pure folly in an investor?s taxable account.

It is difficult to reconcile the volume of trading observed in equity markets with the trading needs of rational investors. Rational investors make periodic contributions and withdrawals from their investment portfolios, rebalance their portfolios, and trade to minimize their taxes. Those possessed of superior information may trade speculatively, though rational speculative traders will generally not choose to trade with each other. It is unlikely that rational trading needs account for a turnover rate of 76 percent on the New York Stock Exchange in 1998. We believe there is a simple and powerful explanation for high levels of trading on financial markets: overconfidence.

Human beings are overconfident about their abilities, their knowledge, and their future prospects. Odean (1998b) shows that overconfident investors trade more than rational investors and that doing so lowers their expected utilities. Greater overconfidence leads to greater trading and to lower expected utility.

We present evidence that the average individual investor pays an extremely large performance penalty for trading. Those investors who trade most actively earn, on average, the lowest returns. And the stocks individual investors purchase do not outperform those they sell by enough to even cover the costs of trading. In fact, the stocks individual investors purchase, on average, subsequently underperform those they sell. This is the case even when trading is not apparently motivated by liquidity demands, tax-loss selling, portfolio rebalancing, or a move to lower-risk stocks.

Our common psychological heritage insures that we systematically share decision biases that can lead to suboptimal investment behavior. Overconfidence provides the will to act on these biases. It gives us the courage of our misguided convictions.

Abstract:
When an investor buys and sells the same stock on the same day, he has made a day trade. We analyze the performance of day traders in Taiwan. Day trading by individual investors is prevalent in Taiwan - accounting for over 20 percent of total volume from 1995 through 1999. Individual investors account for over 97 percent of all day trading activity. Day trading is extremely concentrated. About one percent of individual investors account for half of day trading and one fourth of total trading by individual investors. Heavy day traders earn gross profits, but their profits are not sufficient to cover transaction costs. Moreover, in the typical six month period, more than eight out of ten day traders lose money. Despite these bleak findings, there is strong evidence of persistent ability for a relatively small group of day traders. Traders with strong past performance continue to earn strong returns. The stocks they buy outperform those they sell by 62 basis points per day. This spread is sufficiently large to cover transaction costs.

day traders, individual investors, market efficiency

Abstract:
A substantial literature in institutional herding examines reasons for and evidence of correlated trading across institutional investors, but little has been written about the extent to which individual investor trading is correlated or why. We document that the trading of individuals is highly correlated and surprisingly persistent. Furthermore, we find that the systematic trading of individual investors is driven by their own decisions - trades they initiated - rather than by passive reactions to institutional herding. We discuss why this correlation is unlikely to stem from the same motivations as institutional herding. Correlated trading by individuals is a necessary condition for the trading biases of individual investors to affect asset prices, since the trades of any particular individual are likely to be small. The preferences for buying some stocks while selling others must be shared by many individual investors if these preferences are to affect prices. We analyze trading records for 66,465 households at a large national discount broker between January 1991 and November 1996 and 665,533 investors at a large retail broker between January 1997 and June 1999. Using a variety of empirical approaches, we document that the trading of individuals is more coordinated than one would expect by mere chance. For example, if individual investors are net buyers of a stock this month, they are likely to be net buyers of the stock next month.

Noise trading, herding, individual investors,

Abstract:
Theoretical models of financial markets built on the assumption that some investors are overconfident yield one central prediction: overconfident investors will trade too much. We test this prediction by partitioning investors on the basis of a variable that provides a natural proxy for overconfidence--gender. Psychological research has established that men are more prone to overconfidence than women. Thus, models of investor overconfidence predict that men will trade more and perform worse than women. Using account data for over 35,000 households from a large discount brokerage firm, we analyze the common stock investments of men and women from February 1991 through January 1997. Consistent with the predictions of the overconfidence models, we document that men trade 45 percent more than women and earn annual risk-adjusted net returns that are 1.4 percent less than those earned by women. These differences are more pronounced between single men and single women; single men trade 67 percent more than single women and earn annual risk-adjusted net returns that are 2.3 percent less than those earned by single women.

Abstract:
We document that individual investor trading results in systematic and, more importantly, economically large losses. Using a complete trading history of all investors in Taiwan, we document that the aggregate portfolio of individual investors suffers an annual performance penalty of 3.8 percentage points. Individual investor losses are equivalent to 2.2 percent of Taiwan's GDP or 2.8 percent of total personal income - nearly as much as the total private expenditure on clothing and footwear in Taiwan. Using orders underlying trade, we document that virtually all of individual trading losses can be traced to their aggressive orders; passive orders placed by individuals are profitable at short horizons and suffer modest losses at longer horizons. In contrast, institutions enjoy an annual performance boost of 1.5 percentage points (after commissions and taxes, but before other costs) and both the aggressive and passive trades of institutions are profitable. Foreign institutional investors garner nearly half of the institutional profits. Finally, the introduction of a legal lottery in Taiwan in 2002 coincided with a 25 percent reduction in turnover on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

market efficiency, individual investors, institutional investors, information asymmetry

Abstract:
Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that traded most earned an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returned 17.9 percent. The average household earned an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilted its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turned over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.

Abstract:
Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that traded most earned an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returned 17.9 percent. The average household earned an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilted its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turned over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.

Abstract:
We argue that the purchase decisions of mutual fund investors are influenced by salient, attention-grabbing information. Investors are more sensitive to salient in-your-face fees, like front-end loads and commissions, than operating expenses; they are likely to buy funds that attract their attention through exceptional performance, marketing, or advertising. Our empirical analysis of mutual fund flows over the last 30 years yields strong support for our contention. We find consistently negative relations between fund flows and front-end load fees. We also document a negative relation between fund flows and commissions charged by brokerage firms. In contrast, we find no relation (or a perverse positive relation) between operating expenses and fund flows. Additional analyses indicate that mutual fund marketing and advertising, the costs of which are often embedded in a fund's operating expenses, account for this surprising result.

mutual funds, investor behavior, operating expenses

Abstract:
This paper takes a first step towards demonstrating that overall trading volume in equity markets is excessive, by showing that it is excessive for a particular group of investors: those with discount brokerage accounts. One possible cause of excessive trading is overconfidence. Overconfident investors will trade too frequently, that is, the gains overconfident investors realize through trade will be less than they anticipate and may not even offset trading costs. By analyzing trading records for 10,000 accounts at a large discount brokerage house, I test whether the securities these investors purchase outperform those they sell by enough to cover the costs of trading. I find the surprising result that, on average, the securities they purchase actually underperform those they sell. This is the case even when trading is not apparently motivated by liquidity demands, tax-loss selling, portfolio rebalancing, or a move to lower-risk securities. I examine return patterns before and after transactions. Return patterns before purchases and sales can be explained by the difficulty of the search for securities to buy, investors' tendency to let their attention be directed by outside sources, the disposition effect, and investors' reluctance to sell short.

Abstract:
This paper takes a first step towards demonstrating that overall trading volume in equity markets is excessive, by showing that it is excessive for a particular group of investors: those with discount brokerage accounts. One possible cause of excessive trading is overconfidence. Overconfident investors will trade too frequently, that is, the gains overconfident investors realize through trade will be less than they anticipate and may not even offset the costs of trading. By analyzing trading records for 10,000 accounts at a large discount brokerage house, I test whether the securities these investors purchase outperform those they sell by enough to cover the costs of trading. I find the surprising result that, on average, the securities they purchase actually underperform those they sell. This is the case even when trading is not apparently motivated by liquidity demands, tax-loss selling, portfolio rebalancing, or a move to lower-risk securities. I examine return patterns before and after transactions. Return patterns before purchases and sales can be explained by the difficulty of the search for securities to buy, investors' tendency to let their attention be directed by outside sources, the disposition effect, and investors' reluctance to sell short.

Abstract:
I test the disposition effect, the tendency of investors to hold losing investments too long and sell winning investments too soon, by analyzing trading records for 10,000 accounts at a large discount brokerage house. These investors demonstrate a strong preference for realizing winners rather than losers. Their behavior does not appear to be motivated by a desire to rebalance portfolios, or to avoid the higher trading costs of low price stocks. Nor is it justified by subsequent portfolio performance. For taxable investments, it is sub-optimal and leads to lower after-tax returns. Tax-motivated selling is most evident in December.

Abstract:
I test the disposition effect, the tendency of investors to hold losing investments too long and sell winning investments too soon, by analyzing trading records for 10,000 accounts at a large
discount brokerage house. These investors demonstrate a strong preference for realizing winners rather than losers. Their behavior does not appear to be motivated by a desire to rebalance
portfolios, or to avoid the higher trading costs of low price stocks. Nor is it justified by subsequent portfolio performance. For taxable investments, it is sub-optimal and leads to lower
after-tax returns. Tax-motivated selling is most evident in December.

Abstract:
We examine changes in the stock trading behavior and investment performance of 1,607 investors who switch from phone based to online trading during the period 1992 to 1995. We document that young men who are active traders with high incomes and a preference for investing in small growth stocks with high market risk are more likely to switch to online trading. We also find that those who switch to online trading experience unusually strong performance prior to going online, beating the market by more than two percent annually. After going online, they trade more actively, more speculatively, and less profitably than before -- lagging the market by more than three percent annually. A rational response to reductions in market frictions (lower trading costs, improved execution speed, and greater ease of access) does not explain these findings. The increase in trading and reduction in performance of online investors can be explained by overconfidence augmented by self-attribution bias, the illusion of knowledge, and the illusion of control.

Abstract:
Managers make decisions on behalf of shareholders. In this context, financial economists have promoted executive stock options as a means to realign the incentives of managers with those of shareholders. We argue that overconfidence and optimism, which are likely to characterize managers, provide an alternative solution to this agency problem. Whereas risk-averse rational managers tend to postpone the addition of new projects until precise information is known about them, overconfident and optimistic managers hesitate less before making their decisions. Moderate levels of overconfidence and optimism tend to align these decisions with the interests of shareholders, increase firm value, and reduce the need for option compensation. In fact, compensating overconfident, optimistic managers as if they were rational hurts shareholders by unnecessarily transferring shareholder wealth to managers and by encouraging managers to take risks that are not in shareholders' best interests.

Abstract:
We develop a multi-period market model describing both the process by which traders learn about their ability and how a bias in this learning can create overconfident traders. A trader in our model initially does not know his own ability, that is, the probability that he will receive a valid signal in each period. He infers this ability from his successes and failures. In assessing his ability the trader takes too much credit for his successes, i.e. he weighs his successes more heavily than would a true Bayesian agent. This leads him to become overconfident. A trader's expected level of overconfidence increases in the early stages of his career. Then, with more experience, he comes to better recognize his own ability. An overconfident trader trades too aggressively, thereby increasing trading volume and market volatility while lowering his own expected profits. Though a greater number of past successes indicates greater probable ability, a more successful trader may actually have lower expected profits in the next period than a less successful trader due to his greater overconfidence. Since overconfidence is generated by success, overconfident traders are not the poorest traders. Their survival in the market is not threatened. Overconfidence does not make traders wealthier, but the process of becoming wealthy can make traders overconfident.

Abstract:
Using account data for over 60,000 households from a large discount brokerage firm, we analyze the common stock investment performance of individual investors from February 1991 through December 1996. The average household tilts their common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turns over 80 per cent of their portfolio annually. On one hand, the gross returns (before accounting for transaction costs) earned by the average household are unremarkable; the average household earned an annualized geometric mean gross return of 17.7 per cent while the value-weighted market index earned 17.1 per cent. On the other hand, the net returns earned by the average household lag reasonable benchmarks by economically and statistically significant amounts; the average household earned an annualized geometric mean net return of 15.3 per cent. The 20 per cent of households that trade most (which average at least 9.6 per cent turnover per month) earned an annualized geometric mean net return of 10.0 per cent. The poor performance of those households that trade frequently is generally consistent with the implications of recent theoretical models of investor overconfidence. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.

Abstract:
People are overconfident. Overconfidence affects financial markets. How depends on who in the market is overconfident and on how information is distributed. This paper examines markets in which price-taking traders, a strategic-trading insider, and risk-averse market-makers are overconfident. Overconfidence increases expected trading volume, increases market depth, and decreases the expected utility of overconfident traders. Its effect on volatility and price quality depend on who is overconfident. Overconfident traders can cause markets to underreact to the information of rational traders. Markets also underreact to abstract, statistical, and highly relevant information, while they overreact to salient, anecdotal, and less relevant information.

Abstract:
People are overconfident. Overconfidence affects financial markets. How depends on who in the market is overconfident and on how information is distributed. This paper examines markets in which price-taking traders, a strategic-trading insider, and risk-averse market-makers are overconfident. Overconfidence increases expected trading volume, increases market depth, and decreases the expected utility of overconfident traders. Its effect on volatility and price quality depend on who is overconfident. Overconfident traders can cause markets to underreact to the information of rational traders. Markets also underreact to abstract, statistical, and highly relevant information, while they overreact to salient, anecdotal, and less relevant information.

Abstract:
We establish two previously undocumented patterns in the purchase selections of individual investors and confirm a related pattern. These patterns hinge on investors' previous experience with a stock. We demonstrate that investors prefer to: (1) repurchase stocks they previously sold for a gain rather than stocks they previously sold for a loss, (2) repurchase stocks that have lost value subsequent to a prior sale, rather than stocks that have gained value subsequent to a prior sale, and (3) purchase additional shares of stocks that have lost value since being purchased, rather than additional shares of stocks that have gained value since being purchased. We document these trading patterns by analyzing trading records for 66,465 households at a large discount broker between January 1991 and November 1996, and 665,533 investors at a large retail broker between January 1997 and June 1999. We propose that the first trading pattern results from a simple form of learning, whereby investors repeat actions that previously resulted in pleasure while avoiding actions that previously led to pain (i.e., they repurchase their previous winners more readily than their previous losers). We argue that the second and third trading patterns are tied to counterfactuals. Investors who buy a stock at a higher price than they previously sold it are painfully aware that they are worse off than if they had simply never sold that stock. Investors who buy a stock at a lower price than they previously sold it experience the pleasure of knowing they are better off than if they had never sold that stock. Investor returns do not reliably benefit from any of the three patterns we document.

Behavioral finance, prospect theory, disposition effect, individual investors

Abstract:
The financial press makes frequent and bold claims regarding the performance of investment clubs. One oft quoted figure from a National Association of Investment Club survey states that 60 percent of investment clubs beat the market. Are these claims myth or reality?

We analyze the common stock investment performance of 166 investment clubs using account data from a large discount broker from February 1991 to January 1997. We document that the average club earned an annualized geometric mean return of 14.1 percent, while a market index returned 17.9 percent. In addition, 60 percent of the clubs we analyze underperform the index. Not only did the average club fail to beat the market, it failed to match the performance of the average individual investor, who earned 16.4 percent during our sample period.

There are two reasons for the poor performance of investment clubs relative to individuals during our sample period -- trading costs and investment style. Despite having roughly similar account sizes, clubs execute smaller trades and hold more stocks than do individuals. Thus their proportionate cost of trading is higher. These higher proportionate trading costs account for approximately one-third of the clubs' performance shortfall relative to individuals. The remaining two-thirds of the shortfall are accounted for by investment style. Relative to individuals, clubs tilt more toward large stocks and growth stocks. During our sample period, large stocks underperformed small stocks (by 15 basis points per month) and growth stocks underperformed value stocks (by 20 basis points per month).

Investment clubs serve many useful functions: They encourage savings. They educate their members about financial matters. They foster friendships and social ties. They entertain. Unfortunately, their investments do not beat the market.

Abstract:
The financial press makes frequent and bold claims regarding the performance of investment clubs. One oft quoted figure from a National Association of Investment Club survey states that 60 percent of investment clubs beat the market. Are these claims myth or reality?

We analyze the common stock investment performance of 166 investment clubs using account data from a large discount broker from February 1991 to January 1997. We document that the average club earned an annualized geometric mean return of 14.1 percent, while a market index returned 17.9 percent. In addition, 60 percent of the clubs we analyze underperform the index. Not only did the average club fail to beat the market, it failed to match the performance of the average individual investor, who earned 16.4 percent during our sample period.

There are two reasons for the poor performance of investment clubs relative to individuals during our sample period -- trading costs and investment style. Despite having roughly similar account sizes, clubs execute smaller trades and hold more stocks than do individuals. Thus their proportionate cost of trading is higher. These higher proportionate trading costs account for approximately one-third of the clubs? performance shortfall relative to individuals. The remaining two-thirds of the shortfall are accounted for by investment style. Relative to individuals, clubs tilt more toward large stocks and growth stocks. During our sample period, large stocks underperformed small stocks (by 15 basis points per month) and growth stocks underperformed value stocks (by 20 basis points per month).

Investment clubs serve many useful functions: They encourage savings. They educate their members about financial matters. They foster friendships and social ties. They entertain. Unfortunately, their investments do not beat the market.

Abstract:
We ask whether the typical investor and the aggregate investor exhibit a bias known as the disposition effect, the tendency to sell investments are held for a profit at a faster rate than investments held for a loss. We analyze all trading activity on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) for the five years ending in 1999. Using a dataset that contains all trades (over one billion) and the identity of every trader (nearly four million), we find that in aggregate, investors in Taiwan are about twice as likely to sell a stock if they are holding that stock for a gain rather than as loss. Eighty-four percent of all Taiwanese investors sell winners at a faster rate than losers. Individuals, corporations, and dealers are reluctant to realize losses, while mutual funds and foreigners, who together account for less than five percent of all trades (by value), are not.

Disposition effect, behavioral finance, investor behavior

Abstract:
We ask whether the typical investor and the aggregate investor exhibit a bias known as the disposition effect, the tendency to sell investments that are held for a profit at a faster rate than investments held for a loss. We analyse all trading activity on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) for the five years ending in 1999. Using a dataset that contains all trades (over one billion) and the identity of every trader (nearly four million), we find that in aggregate, investors in Taiwan are about twice as likely to sell a stock if they are holding that stock for a gain rather than a loss. Eighty-four percent of all Taiwanese investors sell winners at a faster rate than losers. Individuals, corporations, and dealers are reluctant to realise losses, while mutual funds and foreigners, who together account for less than 5% of all trades (by value), are not.

Abstract:
On January 9th 2009, Terry Odean and Betty Simkins interviewed Vernon L. Smith for this issue of the Journal of Applied Finance. Vernon Smith is widely regarded as the "father of experimental economics" for his pathbreaking work in this area. After decades of research, the once novel field of ‘experimental economics’ has become a recognized strand of the literature that contributes to our understanding of market mechanisms and more broadly, to the field of behavioral financial economics.

In 2002, Vernon Smith was a co-recipient for the Nobel Prize in Economics "for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms". In this interview, Vernon Smith shares his insights on markets. Among the issues he addresses are:

* the relation between experimental economics and behavioral economics, * the insights his research on speculative bubbles in experimental markets provides for understanding the recent bubble is US residential real estate, and * his view as to reasons for the dramatic rise and fall in oil prices last year.

Experimental economics, behavioral finance, Nobel Laureate

Abstract:
Individual investor trading results in systematic and economically large losses. Using a complete trading history of all investors in Taiwan, we document that the aggregate portfolio of individuals suffers an annual performance penalty of 3.8 percentage points. Individual investor losses are equivalent to 2.2% of Taiwan's gross domestic product or 2.8% of the total personal income. Virtually all individual trading losses can be traced to their aggressive orders. In contrast, institutions enjoy an annual performance boost of 1.5 percentage points, and both the aggressive and passive trades of institutions are profitable. Foreign institutions garner nearly half of institutional profits.

G11, G14, G15, H31

Abstract:
We study the trading of individual investors using transaction data and identifying buyer- or seller-initiated trades. We document four results: (1) Small trade order imbalance correlates well with order imbalance based on trades from retail brokers. (2) Individual investors herd. (3) When measured annually, small trade order imbalance forecasts future returns; stocks heavily bought underperform stocks heavily sold by 4.4 percentage points the following year. (4) Over a weekly horizon, small trade order imbalance reliably predicts returns, but in the opposite direction; stocks heavily bought one week earn strong returns the subsequent week, while stocks heavily sold earn poor returns.

G11, G12, G14

Abstract:
We test and confirm the hypothesis that individual investors are net buyers of attention-grabbing stocks, e.g., stocks in the news, stocks experiencing high abnormal trading volume, and stocks with extreme one-day returns. Attention-driven buying results from the difficulty that investors have searching the thousands of stocks they can potentially buy. Individual investors do not face the same search problem when selling because they tend to sell only stocks they already own. We hypothesize that many investors consider purchasing only stocks that have first caught their attention. Thus, preferences determine choices after attention has determined the choice set.

Abstract:
In this paper we compare the investment decisions of groups (stock clubs) and individuals. Both individuals and clubs are more likely to purchase stocks that are associated with good reasons (e.g., a company that is featured on a list of most admired companies). However, stock clubs favor such stocks more than individuals despite the fact that such reasons do not improve performance. We describe why social dynamics may make good reasons more important for groups than individuals.

Reason-based choice, group decision making, group polarization

Abstract:
Using brokerage account data, we analyze the tax awareness of individual investors. We find strong evidence that taxes matter: investors prefer to locate bonds and mutual funds in retirement accounts and, in December, harvest stock losses in their taxable accounts. However, investors also trade actively in their taxable accounts, realize gains more frequently than losses, and locate a material portion of their bonds in taxable accounts. Though taxes leave clear footprints in the data we analyze, many investors could improve their after-tax performance by fully capitalizing on the tax avoidance strategies available to equities, while optimally locating their assets.

Aasset location, asset allocation, portfolio choice, taxation

Abstract:
Theoretical models predict that overconfident investors trade excessively. We test this prediction by partitioning investors on gender. Psychological research demonstrates that, in areas such as finance, men are more overconfident than women. Thus, theory predicts that men will trade more excessively than women. Using account data for over 35,000 households from a large discount brokerage, we analyze the common stock investments of men and women from February 1991 through January 1997. We document that men trade 45 percent more than women. Trading reduces men's net returns by 2.65 percentage points a year as opposed to 1.72 percentage points for women.