I’ll Trade, Just Not Today: Individual Investor Trading Activity around Birthdays

Abstract

In this paper we provide new evidence of investor inattention by showing that personal occurrences such as birthdays are able to drive attention away from the stock market. We document that individual investors significantly reduce their trading activity in the three days around their birthday. The reduction in the propensity to trade is larger for more active traders, in the event of a decade birthday and when this celebrative event falls on a Friday. Results are robust to analyses focusing only on days when investor attention should be at its peak, as expressed by excess news coverage and trading volumes.

Keywords: Investor attention, Trading activity, Personal occurrences

JEL Classification: G30, G32