We study a set of German open-end mutual funds for a time period during which this industry emerged from its infancy. In those years, the distribution channel for mutual funds was dominated by the brick-and-mortar retail networks of the large universal banks. Using monthly observations from...

Recent empirical research suggests that measures of investor sentiment have predictive power for future stock returns over the intermediate and long term. Given the widespread publication of sentiment indicators, smart investors should trade on the information conveyed by such indicators and...

We analyze data on stock index forecasts made by private investors. The implied returns calculated from these forecasts exhibit negative skewness and excess kurtosis. Past returns have a positive impact on the implied returns, consistent with investors expecting positive momentum. Females are...

Risk-adjusted momentum returns are usually estimated by sorting stocks into a regularly rebalanced long-short portfolio based on their prior return and then running a full-sample regression of the portfolio returns on a set of factors (portfolio-level risk adjustment). This approach implicitly...

The overvaluation hypothesis (Miller 1977) predicts that a) stocks are overvalued in the presence of short selling restrictions and that b) the overvaluation increases in the degree of divergence of opinion. We design an experiment that allows us to test these predictions in the laboratory. The...

Post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD) is one of the most solidly documented asset pricing anomalies. We use the controlled conditions of an experimental lab to investigate whether earnings autocorrelation is the driving cause of this anomaly. We observe PEAD in settings with uncorrelated and...

This paper serves two purposes. First, we introduce a new data set on the German stock market which is publicly available to all researchers. It comprises factor returns (a market factor, a size factor, a book-to-market factor, and a momentum factor) as well as returns of portfolios which are...

We analyze the decision to announce an open market share repurchase and the share price reaction to the announcement. We use a conditional estimation approach which takes into account that the repurchase decision is made rationally and that, consequently, there is a potential selection bias....