Combining survey responses and trading records of clients of a German retail broker, this paper examines some of the causes for the apparent failure to buy and hold a well-diversified portfolio. The subjective investor attributes gleaned from the survey help explain the variation in actual...

We asked subjects to self-select into one of two contests, "coin" or "die." The winner in each of the contests is the person with most correct guesses of 20 coin flips or 20 rolls of a die, respectively. Most subjects reported that they believed that most people would go to the "coin" group....