We present evidence that market sentiment is positively priced in the cross-section of stock returns in low-sentiment periods. We estimate individual stock exposure to market sentiment and find that, in periods of low market sentiment, stocks in the highest sentiment beta quintile generate a...

We propose idiosyncratic volatility based return spread as a new measure of the stock-level value of investor sophistication. We find that stocks with a high value of investor sophistication tend to have low average returns, and this effect is pronounced for highly short-sale constrained stocks....

We administer a survey to thousands of affluent Americans about their personalities and investments. The Big Five personality traits can explain the heterogeneity among investors in their beliefs about the stock market and economy, risk preferences, and social-interaction tendencies. Two...

Consistent with information-based theories, ``regular'' ETFs (i.e., those without embedded leverage) are more liquid than their underlyings. Consistent with speculation-based theories, levered ETFs have substantially higher intermediation costs than regular ETFs. The cost difference between...