We report on an experiment studying how traders react to stock splits and reverse splits. In the first environment, two assets have increasing fundamental values, and one asset is subject to a 2-for-1 share split while the other is not. In the second environment, the fundamental values of both...

Banerjee, Kaniel, and Kremer (2009) claim that specific models of disagreement (their Examples 3 and 4) illustrate positive return autocorrelation (price drift). Based on a formal definition of equilibrium with heterogeneous beliefs, we prove that these examples do not actually generate price...

We find that realized skewness is a significant indicator of returns across a range of assets from different asset classes, namely commodities, government bonds, equity indices and currencies. Taking on skewness risk is broadly compensated within, but more substantially across asset classes....

Due to their short lifespans and migrating moneyness, options are notoriously difficult to study with the factor models commonly used to analyze the risk-return tradeoff in other asset classes. In-trumented principal components analysis (IPCA) solves this problem by tracking contracts in terms...

We present resiliency as a measure of liquidity, and assess its relationship to expected returns. We establish a covariance-based measure, RES, that captures opening period resiliency and, using it, find a significant non-resiliency premium that ranges from 33 to 57 basis points per month. The...

We examine how weather conditions near a firm's major institutional investors affect stock market reactions to firms' earnings announcements. We find that unpleasant weather experienced by institutional investors leads to more delayed market responses to earnings news. Moreover, unpleasant...

An abundance of evidence relates facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) to masculine behaviors in males. We show that hedge funds operated by high-fWHR managers underperform those operated by low-fWHR managers, bear greater downside risk, are more susceptible to fire sales, and fail more often....

We evaluate the economic consequences of mutual fund advisory misconduct from 2000 to 2015. An average of 31.25% reduction in monthly fund flows occurs in one year after the misconduct. The effect is more pronounced in funds facing strong investor monitoring. Although all types of misconduct...

Investors' perception of performance is biased because the relevant measure, returns, is rarely displayed. Major indices ignore dividends, inducing mechanical underperformance on ex-dividend days. Newspapers are more pessimistic on these days, consistent with mistaking the index for a return....

We examine whether initial returns influence investors' decisions to return to the stock market following withdrawal. Using a survival analysis technique to estimate Finnish retail investors' likelihood of stock market re-entry reveals that investors who experience lower initial returns are less...