In a panel survey of individual investors, we show that investors’ second-order beliefs—their beliefs about the return expectations of other investors—influence investment decisions. Investors who believe others hold more optimistic stock market expectations allocate more of their own...

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...