We examine underlying factors that explain an exceptionally low stock market participation rate among Lithuanian households by carrying out a comprehensive survey of mass affluent individuals. The probit regression analysis of the survey results indicates that lack of financial literacy, low...

This paper provides direct evidence of leverage-induced fire sales leading to a major stock market crash. Our analysis uses proprietary account-level trading data for brokerage- and shadow-financed margin accounts during the Chinese stock market crash in the summer of 2015. We find that margin...

A risk-neutral probability distribution (RND) for future S&P 500 returns extracted from index options contains investors' true expectations and also their risk preferences. But the empirical pricing kernel that emerges in a representative agent framework, which suppresses investor differences,...

In theory, investors who have low security selection ability trade more, use leverage more, and perform worse if they are overconfident. We confirm these predictions empirically by analyzing the overconfidence, trading, and performance of retail investors who use margin. Using survey data, we...

The present paper reviews two fundamental investing paradigms, which have had a substantial impact on the manner investors tend to develop their own strategies. specifically, the study elaborates on efficient market hypothesis (emh), which, despite remaining most prominent and popular until the...

This study attempts to group investors (individuals and professionals) into different segments based on their psychological biases and personality traits and, then, to examine whether, and how, these biases and traits drive their investment behaviour. The behavioural finance literature suggests...

Using investment policy data of 857 Dutch pension funds during 1999–2006, we develop three indicators of investor sophistication. The indicators show that pension funds’ strategic portfolio choices are often based on coarse and less sophisticated approaches. First, most pension funds round...

The real estate investment trust (REIT) industry experienced a liquidity crisis resulting from reduced access to credit commitments as banks were restoring their balance sheets during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Employing generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH)...

This paper studies the prevalence of the disposition effect in individual traders in the Australian equities market. In particular, we examine the effect of demographics and Chinese ethnicity on trading behaviour. The relationship between ethnic background and trading behaviour has not...

Purpose – People often face constraints such as a lack of time or information in taking decisions, which leads them to use heuristics. In these situations, fast and frugal rules may be useful for making adaptive decisions with fewer resources, even if it leads to suboptimal choices. When...