We examine whether consumer confidence - as a proxy for individual investor sentiment - affects expected stock returns internationally in 18 industrialized countries. In line with recent evidence for the U.S., we find that sentiment negatively forecasts aggregate stock market returns on average...

This paper contributes empirically to our understanding of informed traders. It analyzes traders' characteristics in an electronic limit order market via anonymous trader identities. We use six indicators of informed trading in a cross-sectional multivariate approach to identify traders with...

The puzzling evidence of seemingly high momentum returns is related to an understanding of risk as a simple covariance. If we consider, however, risk in higher-order statistical moments, momentum returns appear less advantageous. Thus, a prospect-theoretical assessment of US stock momentum...

Using a new data set on investor sentiment we show that institutional and individual sentiment proxy for smart money and noise trader risk, respectively. First, using bias-adjusted long-horizon regressions, we document that institutional sentiment forecasts stock market returns at intermediate...

We show that information about the counterparty of a trade affects the future trading decisions of individual traders. The effect is such that traders tend to reverse their order flow in line with the better-informed counterparties. Informed traders primarily incorporate their own private as...