Monday Mornings: Individual Investor Trading on Days of the Week and Times Within a Day

Abstract

Individual investors’ demand for trading activity will vary over time according to their availability and desire to trade. Academic research has primarily investigated market wide trading activity, showing low trading activity on Mondays and high activity at the start and end of each day. It remains unknown whether individual investors’ trading behavior mimics these market patterns. Instead research on individual investors shows that they overtrade in general and are less likely to trade losses. We research trading activity for 7 200 UK investors, finding these investors actually prefer trading on Mondays and trade in a W-shaped intraday pattern. Further investigation revealed that investors increased their selling of losses on Monday mornings, suggesting investors utilise spare time to process difficult trading decisions.

Keywords: Monday, W-Shape, Disposition Effect, Trading Frequency, Day of the Week

JEL Classification: G02, G11