Using German and US brokerage data we find that investors are more likely to sell speculative stocks trading at a gain. Investors' gain realizations are monotonically increasing in a stock's speculativeness. This translates into a high disposition effect for speculative and a much lower...

Contemporary financial stochastic programs typically involve a trade-offbetween return and (downside)-risk. Using stochastic programming we characterize analytically (rather than numerically) the optimal decisions that follow from characteristic single-stage and multi-stage versions of such...

We investigate covariance matrix estimation in vast-dimensional spaces of 1,500 up to 2,000 stocks using fundamental factor models (FFMs). FFMs are the typical benchmark in the asset management industry and depart from the usual statistical factor models and the factor models with observed...

We test whether asymmetric preferences for losses versus gains as in Ang, Chen, and Xing (2006) also affect the pricing of cash flow versus discount rate news as in Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004). We construct a new four-fold beta decomposition, distinguishing cash flow and discount rate betas...

We show that if an agent is uncertain about the precise form of his utility function, his actual relative risk aversion may depend on wealth even if he knows his utility function lies in the class of constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility functions. We illustrate the consequences of this...

We show that if an agent is uncertain about the precise form of his utility function, his actual relative risk aversion may depend on wealth even if he knows his utility function lies in the class of constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility functions. We illustrate the consequences of this...

We test whether asymmetric preferences for losses versus gains as in Ang, Chen, and Xing (2006) also affect the pricing of cash flow versus discount rate news as in Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004). We construct a new four-fold beta decomposition, distinguishing cash flow and discount rate betas...

Do women invest differently than men? We contribute to the answer of this question by analysing the Panel on Household Finances (PHF) of the German Bundesbank. This representative panel collects a wide variety of behavioural and financial variables in the area of household finance. We find that...