Skewness Expectations and Portfolio Choice
91 Pages Posted: 18 Jul 2016 Last revised: 5 Oct 2022
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Skewness Expectations and Portfolio Choice
Skewness Expectations and Portfolio Choice
Date Written: September 28, 2022
Abstract
Many models of investor behavior predict that investors prefer assets that they believe to have positively skewed return distributions. We elicit detailed return expectations for a broad index fund and a single stock in a representative sample of the Dutch population. The data show substantial heterogeneity in individuals’ skewness expectations of which only very little is captured by sociodemographics. Across assets, most respondents expect a higher variance and skewness for the individual stock compared to the index fund. Portfolio allocations increase with the skewness of respondents’ return expectations for the respective asset, controlling for other moments of a respondent’s expectations.
Keywords: Stock Market Expectations, Skewness, Portfolio Choice, Behavioral Finance
JEL Classification: G02, G11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation