"Capital gain distributions by mutual funds generate tax liability for taxable shareholders, thereby reducing their after-tax returns. Taxable investors who are considering purchasing fund shares around distribution dates have an incentive to delay their purchase until after the distribution,...

We study theoretically and empirically the relationship between investor beliefs, ownership dispersion and stock returns. We find that high dispersion, measured by high breadth or low Herfindahl index, forecasts returns positively for large stocks, as in Chen, Hong and Stein (2002), but...