We use novel data on individual activity in a sports betting market to study the effect of past performance sequences on individual behavior in a real market. The revelation of fundamental values in this market enables us to disentangle whether behavior is caused by sentiment or by superior...

Purpose - The current study aims to investigate the impacts of two behavioral biases, namely, loss aversion and overconfidence on the performance of US companies. First, the impact of loss aversion on the economic performance of companies was assessed. Second, the impact of overconfidence on...

We show that managerial overconfidence, which has been found to influence a number of corporate financial decisions, also affects corporate risk management. We find that managers increase their speculative activities using derivatives following speculative gains, while they do not reduce their...

An efficient market should not show any anomalies. When new information reaches a market which is efficient, it should automatically translate into prices of assets, which ought to eliminate the possibility of gaining an advantage over other investors, thus preventing excess profits. However,...

This paper sheds new light on the mutual relationship between investor sentiment and excess returns corresponding to the bubble component of stock prices. We propose to use the wavelet concept of the phase angle to determine the lead-lag relation between these variables. The wavelet phase angle...

We find that aggregate net equity fund flows are strongly negatively correlated with changes in expected future stock market volatility as measured by the VIX. Implying that investor purchase decisions are primarily driven by returns and sale decisions by risk perceptions, we further find that...

We examine the predictive effect of sentiment on the cross-section of stock returns across different economic states. The degree of mispricing and the subsequent price correction can be different between economic expansion and recession because of the limits of arbitrage and short sale...

Recent research shows that small trade imbalances are negatively associated with future stock returns. I find that this negative association only exists when stocks have initially been mispriced. In addition, mispricing occurs before the sentimental trading of small investors. In stocks with...

Extant literature consistently documents that investors tilt their domestic equity portfolios towards regionally close stocks (local bias). We hypothesize that individual investors' local bias is not limited to the domestic sphere but instead also determines their international investment...

This paper investigates if familiarity induced by ambiguity aversion can help explaining the local bias phenomenon among individual investors. Using geographic closeness as a proxy for investor familiarity, we find that investors pull out of (unfamiliar) remote stocks, and pour into (familiar)...