We combine a customized survey and randomized controlled trial (RCT) to study the effect of higher-order beliefs on U.S. retail investors' portfolio allocations. We find that investors' higher-order beliefs about stock market returns are correlated with but distinct from their first-order...

Robinhood (RH) investors increased their holdings in the March 2020 COVID bear market, indicating an absence of collective panic and margin calls. This steadfastness was rewarded in the subsequent bull market. Despite unusual interests in some “experience” stocks (e.g., cannabis stocks),...

This paper studies the impact of retail investors on stock liquidity during the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown in Spring 2020. Retail trading exhibits a sharp increase, especially among stocks with high COVID-19-related media coverage. Retail trading attenuated the rise in illiquidity by roughly...

Robinhood (RH) investors collectively increased their holdings in the March 2020 COVID bear market, indicating an absence of panic and margin calls. Their steadfastness was rewarded in the subsequent bull market. Despite unusual interest in some “experience” stocks, their aggregated...

This paper analyzes how individual investors respond to inflation. We introduce a unique dataset containing information on local inflation and security portfolios of more than 2,000 clients of a German bank between 1920 and 1924, covering the hyperinflation. We find that individual investors buy...

Shareholder perks are in-kind gifts or purchase discounts that disproportionately reward small shareholders. Data from Japanese firms indicate that firms initiating perk programs attract individual retail shareholders and experience increases in share values. We find support for three channels...

We examine whether natural disaster experiences affect households' portfolio choice decisions. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that adversely affected households are less likely to participate in risky asset markets. After a disaster shock, households...

We document significant persistence in the market timing performance of active individual investors, suggesting that some investors are skilled at timing. Using data on all trades by active Finnish individual investors over almost 15 years, we also show that the net purchases of skilled versus...

This study investigates an important but under-researched topic in Europe, the small shareholder turnout decision. We assess which factors contribute to (small) shareholder participation using a hand-collected panel dataset with information about turnout rates, voting behaviour, and ownership...

Do freeze-out mergers mitigate the free rider problem of corporate takeovers? We study this question in a tender offer model with finitely many shareholders. Under a freeze-out merger, shareholders expect to receive the original offer price whether or not they tender their shares. We show that...

In this paper, we conducted an empirical analysis of the impact of implementation of shareholder perks, which attract small investors, on the risks of Japanese stocks. We tested hypotheses on the impact of implementation of shareholder perks on cost of equity capital, idiosyncratic risk, stock...

We introduce a new measure of herding that allows for tracking dynamics of individual herding. Using a database of over 8 million trades by 87,373 retail investors between 1999 and 2006, we show in an original way that individual herding is persistent over time and that past performance and the...

Using proprietary data on millions of trades by retail investors, we provide the first large-scale evidence that retail short selling predicts negative stock returns. A portfolio that mimics weekly retail shorting earns an annualized risk-adjusted return of 9%. The predictive ability of retail...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System. We find that active investors earn significantly higher returns and risk-adjusted returns than inactive investors. A performance decomposition analysis reveals that most of...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System in the period 2000 to 2010. We find that active investors outperform passive investors, and that there is a causal effect of fund changes on performance. Chosen funds...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System. We find that active investors earn significantly higher returns and risk-adjusted returns than inactive investors. A performance decomposition analysis reveals that most of...

This paper investigates investor attention using novel panel data on daily online logins for a large sample of retirement accounts. We find support for selective attention to portfolio information. Account logins fall by 9.5% after market declines. Investors also pay less attention when the VIX...

This paper investigates investor attention using novel panel data on daily online logins for a large sample of retirement accounts. We find support for selective attention to portfolio information. Account logins fall by 9.5% after market declines. Investors also pay less attention when the VIX...

We address one of the cardinal puzzles of European corporate law: the lack of derivate shareholder suits. We explain this phenomenon on the basis of percentage limits which require shareholders to hold a minimum amount of shares in order to bring a law suit. We show that, under this legal...