Class and field surveys revealed that personal inclination to take structured lottery-risk significantly correlates with optimism in financial forecasting. Trait optimism reflects in return predictions for successful and problematic stocks, in likelihood assessments of specific events, and even...

The experimental approach was applied to test the value of historical return series in technical prediction. Return sequences were randomly drawn cross-sectionally and over time from S&P500 records and participants were asked to predict the 13th realization from 12 preceding returns. The...

A field experiment revealed 3 forms of unrealistic optimism in skilled investors’ interval predictions of future stock returns. The judgmental intervals were about 50% shorter than realized spreads in recent 3–6months histories, suggesting that “underestimation of volatility” persists...