We document that prior portfolio choices influence investors' expectations about asset values, and their future choices. We find that people update more from information consistent with their prior choices, leading to sticky portfolios over time. These effects are related to how the brain's...

Continuously rebalanced long-short trades are similar to highly levered trades in that their PNL profile depends not only on the final distribution of return, but also on the realized co-variance structure of the asset pair. It's easily possible for both orientations of a rebalanced long-short...

We propose a theory of memory recall bias that is different from Bénabou and Tirole (2002). In our framework, remembering a negative event can be painful and lowers current and future memory utility, while it helps the decision-maker to make better decisions in the future. The decision-maker...

​Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I document that childhood experience of father's job loss decreases the propensity to own stocks as an adult. If this experience takes place at the age of 5–10 years, the probability of owning stocks decreases by 2.9 percentage...

The US Treasury effectively ”owns” about 24% of the stocks held by high income US taxable investors. Through the capital gains tax, Uncle Sam has an effective exposure of more than $1 trillion of equities. And this huge-but-silent investor might be about to get a lot bigger if capital gains...

This paper investigates investor attention using novel panel data on daily online logins for a large sample of retirement accounts. We find support for selective attention to portfolio information. Account logins fall by 9.5% after market declines. Investors also pay less attention when the VIX...

We report an experiment that infers true overconfidence in relative ability through actions, as opposed to reported beliefs. Subjects choose how to invest earnings from a skill task when the returns depend solely upon risk, or both risk and relative placement, enabling joint estimation of...

We propose that a hyperinflation event has a long-lasting effect on household investment behavior. We want to investigate whether future stock market participation can be influenced by a single extreme macroeconomic instability episode. We use data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and...

Student managed investment funds provide students the opportunity to manage a portfolio of real dollar investments and earn academic credit. Student managed funds typically benefit a University through improved course offerings within the field of finance where academic knowledge and practical...

Undergraduate investments and portfolio management courses have traditionally prescribed the optimal choices for rational economic man—a creature who does not exist. Real portfolio choices, especially those by retail investors, are made by “normal” people, and normal people exhibit...