We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System. We find that active investors earn higher returns and risk-adjusted returns than inactive investors. A performance decomposition analysis reveals that most of 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...

Economic theory suggests that households should invest their financial wealth in a combination of cash and a well-diversified equity portfolio. Yet, many households' equity investments are strongly concentrated in a few assets. Attempts to explain this discrepancy have included low levels of...

This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more...

We study the tradeoff between direct and indirect stock investments through equity mutual funds for a utility-maximizing investor. Whereas direct investments impose higher transaction costs on the formation of a well-diversified portfolio, mutual funds charge fees for their services. Our results...

This study shows that the representative investor's sophistication in the market for mutual funds is time-varying, and increases with the constraints on household disposable income at the aggregate level. Based on the fact that energy commodities are largely inelastic household expenditures that...

This report analyzes data on a group of consistent Roth IRA investors — those holding accounts with the same financial services provider at the end of each year from 2007 through 2014 — drawn from The IRA Investor Database to gain insight into how Roth IRA investors fared during and after...

I show that household investment decisions depend on the manner in which information is displayed by exploiting a regulatory change which prohibited the display of past returns for any period shorter than twelve months. In this setting, the information displayed was altered but the information...

This paper investigates individuals' investment behaviour in their retirement savings surrounding milestone birthday ages. Age is expected to play a key role in influencing investment choices, primarily through the risk of the investment strategy reflected in the asset allocation. Less clear is...