To understand how real investors use their beliefs and preferences in investing decisions, we examine a panel survey of self-directed online investors at a UK bank. The survey asks for return expectations, risk expectations, and risk tolerance of these investors in three-month intervals between...

The disposition effect is one of the most explored biases in behavioral finance, yet most papers investigating the disposition effect use data that only cover boom periods and assume that the disposition effect is constant over time. We use individual investor trading data that comprise several...

How do investors perceive dependence between stock returns? And how does their perception of dependence affect investments and stock prices? We show experimentally that investors understand differences in dependence, but not in terms of correlation. Participants invest as if applying a simple...

Contrary to the current state of research, we find almost complete reinvestment of dividends among the brokerage clients of a German online bank. Yet, investors do not reinvest most dividends immediately after payment. Initially, the bulk of dividends remains parked as cash in investors’...