Do Individual Investors Learn from Their Trading Experience?

Abstract:     
This paper investigates whether individual investors adjust their stock trading according to their stock selection abilities, which can be inferred from their trading history. Fixed-effect panel regressions provide strong evidence that the ability to forecast future stock returns significantly affects investors' trading activity: investors purchase more actively if they are more likely to have stock selection ability. Furthermore, trading experience - measured by the number of purchases, the number of different stocks purchased, and the variance of purchase dollar amounts - significantly helps improve investors' portfolio performance. In addition, we find that learning behavior varies across investors, which corroborates the heterogeneity of individual investors.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 28

Keywords: individual investors, learning, rationality, trading

JEL Classification: D19, G14

working papers series