We survey a representative sample of U.S. individuals about how well leading academic theories describe their financial beliefs and decisions. We find substantial support for many factors hypothesized to affect portfolio equity share, particularly background risk, investment horizon, rare...

This paper studies why investors buy dividend-paying assets and how they time their consumption accordingly. We combine administrative bank data linking customers' consumption transactions and income to detailed portfolio data and survey responses on financial behavior. We find that private...

Using transaction-level data from two German banks, we study the effects of smartphones on investor behavior. Comparing trades by the same investor in the same month across different platforms, we find that smartphones increase purchasing of riskier and lottery-type assets and chasing past...

Using friendship data from Facebook, we study the effects of three aspects of social capital on household financial behavior. We find that the most important measure of social capital in explaining stock market and saving participation is Economic Connectedness, defined as the fraction of one's...

Cryptocurrencies have received growing attention from individuals, the media, and regulators. However, little is known about the investors whom these financial instruments attract. Using administrative data, we describe the investment behavior of individuals who invest in cryptocurrencies with...

Analyzing over 15 years of account-level trading records from Finland, we show that option features-expiration, moneyness, and the strike price-influence the behavior of retail investors and exacerbate their behavioral biases. Retail investors selectively exploit the expiration feature of...

We propose a new objective for portfolio optimization: a weighted average of the probabilitiesof achieving specific target levels and avoiding specific loss levels. The objective is relatively easyto understand by non-experts, making it easier to calibrate to individuals' risk profiles....

Previous studies document a relationship between gambling at the aggregate level and investments in securities with lottery-like features. We combine data on individual gambling consumption with portfolio holdings and trading records to examine whether gambling and trading act as substitutes or...

I study a real-options model where the investor computes the value of a project (VOP) from available data. In the process, she makes mistakes, as she suffers from over-confidence and inference biases. I study how the optimal investment rule and timing depend on investors' biases. I show that the...

Using a large panel of U.S. brokerage accounts trades and positions, we show that a large fraction of retail investors trade as contrarians after large earnings surprises, especially for loser stocks, and that such contrarian trading contributes to post earnings announcement drift (PEAD) and...