Combining monthly survey data with matching trading records, we examine how individual investor perceptions change and drive trading and risk-taking behavior during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We find that investor perceptions fluctuate significantly during the crisis, with risk tolerance...

Existing studies on individual investors' decision-making often rely on observable socio-demographic variables to proxy for underlying psychological processes that drive investment choices. Doing so implicitly ignores the latent heterogeneity amongst investors in terms of their preferences and...