Using data on all employees at listed companies in Taiwan, where pension plans were rare, we find that bias toward employer stocks is generic to individual investor decisionmaking, but not limited to retirement plans. 71 percent of sample employees invest in employer stocks and the employer...

We ask whether the typical investor and the aggregate investor exhibit a bias known as the disposition effect, the tendency to sell investments are held for a profit at a faster rate than investments held for a loss. We analyze all trading activity on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) for the five...

We document that individual investor trading results in systematic and, more importantly, economically large losses. Using a complete trading history of all investors in Taiwan, we document that the aggregate portfolio of individual investors suffers an annual performance penalty of 3.8...

Rational models claim “trading to learn” explains widespread excessive speculative trading and challenge behavioral explanations of excessive trading. We argue rational learning models do not explain speculative trading by studying day traders in Taiwan. Consistent with previous studies of...

A unique data set allows us to examine trading behavior and realized returns of all participants in the Taiwan stock index options. On average individual investors lose money and foreign institutions profit from trading options, even when they use the same trading strategy and for the same type...

We document economically large cross-sectional differences in the before- and after-fee returns earned by speculative traders. We establish this result by focusing on day traders in Taiwan from 1992 to 2006. We argue that these traders are almost certainly speculative traders given their short...

We analyze Taiwan's IPO auctions to shed light on the diminishing role of auctions in IPO markets. In contrast to Ljungqvist and Wilhelm's (2002) results for bookbuilding IPOs, we find that underpricing increases with institutional allocation in auctions. This implies that issuing firms in...

Data from the Taiwan Stock Exchange identify the originator of each submitted order. We study order imbalances categorized by trade size and by investor type, (individuals, domestic institutions, foreign institutions.) Aggregate order imbalances for a given stock are positively autocorrelated...

This paper studies credit card repayment behavior in terms of exact repayment dates and provides causal explanation from inattention for the first time. Using data from a large commercial bank in Asia, we find that 70% of repayments are made before the due date, 9% on time, and 21% overdue. We...

Data from the Taiwan Stock Exchange identify the originator of each submitted order, and there are no designated dealers or specialists. We study marketable order imbalances, i.e., the net order flow resulting from trades that demand immediacy. We distinguish imbalances by trader type...