This survey introduces and reviews the field of behavioral finance. It outlines the traditional finance approach, which builds upon rational acting investors, its assumptions, and its shortcomings. Moreover, it surveys the main findings from psychology and sociology that contrast with this...

Short sellers are routinely blamed for destabilizing stock markets by exacerbating deviations from fundamental values. In response, regulators periodically impose short sale constraints aimed at preventing excessive stock market declines. One explanation is that policy makers regard short...

The answer to the title question is "Yes." Examining stocks traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ for the period of 1964 to 2009, this study discovers that, while momentum prevails among small stocks, momentum and reversals coexist among large stocks for a holding period of up to six months. The...

We measure herding of trading activities by regressing individual order imbalances on market wide, industry wide, and dealer wide order imbalances. We find that stocks whose trading activities herd more have higher sensitivity of their returns to order imbalances. Investors demand compensations...

This article examines the risk and return characteristics of U.S. mutual funds. We employ an equilibrium version of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) and a principal-components-based statistical technique to identify performance benchmarks. We also consider the Capital Asset Pricing Model...

Passive investing, particularly in emerging markets, has become an increasingly popular means of quick, “diversified” exposure to a particular segment of the markets. Defensive investors, as Benjamin Graham noted, would be best served owning a diversified list of leading companies. Yet it's...

The correlation of returns for various equity asset classes has been high. In addition, the range or "dispersion" of returns across asset classes - and across sectors within those asset classes - has been low. These factors have made it difficult for active managers to outperform. But dispersion...

We show that immediate and delayed abnormal returns following earnings announcement surprises differ across market states. Immediate abnormal returns are more sensitive to earnings surprises in down markets, while delayed abnormal returns are less sensitive; underreaction is attenuated in down...

This paper illustrates that when CAPM is expanded to incorporate an investor base with heterogeneous risk aversions over a multi-period timeframe, a more realistic model is revealed which explains many return attributes previously considered to be anomalies. Investor concentrations in the market...

Using stocks traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ for the period of 1964 to 2009, this study demonstrates that, while momentum prevails among small stocks, momentum and reversals coexist among large stocks for a holding period of up to six months. The momentum/reversal divide is along the...