Can Individual Investors Beat the Market?

39 Pages Posted: 6 Jan 2003 Last revised: 21 Jul 2018

See all articles by Joshua D. Coval

Joshua D. Coval

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

David A. Hirshleifer

Marshall School of Business, USC; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Tyler Shumway

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, The Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Date Written: September 1, 2005

Abstract

We document strong persistence in the performance of trades of individual investors. The correlation of the risk-adjusted performance of an individual across sample periods is about 10 percent. Investors classified in the top performance decile in the first half of our sample subsequently outperform those in the bottom decile by about 8 percent per year. Strategies long in firms purchased by previously successful investors and short in firms purchased by previously unsuccessful investors earn abnormal returns of 5 basis points per day. These returns are not confined to small stocks nor to stocks in which the investors are likely to have inside information. Our results suggest that skillful individual investors exploit market inefficiencies to earn abnormal profits, above and beyond any profits available from well-known strategies based upon size, value, or momentum.

Presentation slides are available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3217430

Keywords: Individual Investors, Market Efficiency, Performance Persistence

JEL Classification: G1, D1

Suggested Citation

Coval, Joshua D. and Hirshleifer, David A. and Shumway, Tyler, Can Individual Investors Beat the Market? (September 1, 2005). HBS Finance Working Paper No. 04-025, Harvard NOM Working Paper No. 02-45, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=364000 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.364000

Joshua D. Coval

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit ( email )

Boston, MA 02163
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

David A. Hirshleifer

Marshall School of Business, USC ( email )

Marshall School of Business
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.uci.edu/dhirshle/

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Tyler Shumway (Contact Author)

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, The Stephen M. Ross School of Business ( email )

701 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI MI 48109
United States
734-763-4129 (Phone)
734-936-0274 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.umich.edu/~shumway

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