We conduct field experiments with retail investors recruited from a social trading platform. In our main experiment, we first elicit beliefs about the returns to active investing. We then generate exogenous variation in beliefs by providing treated respondents with information about index funds...

We analyze the financial portfolio performance of Belgian households, using data from the 2010, 2014 and 2017 waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey survey. We document the characteristics of households that participate in risky asset markets, and we examine which households...

This chapter evaluates the returns of the domestic equity funds of three major American companies: Vanguard, Fidelity, and Dimensional Fund Advisors relative to benchmarks using the Fama-French factors from January 2001 through December 2018. We also present Sharpe's (1992) style analysis...

We show that incorporating defined benefit pension funds in an asset pricing model with incomplete markets improves its ability to jointly match the historical equity premium and riskless rate, and has important implications for risk sharing. We emphasize the importance of the pension fund's...

The well-documented nonparticipation in the stock market by many households and the highly negative correlation between stock and housing investment are puzzling. We show that stock and housing markets are cointegrated, and thus households significantly increase housing expenditure, reduce stock...

Using a large panel of U.S. brokerage accounts trades and positions, we show that a large fraction of retail investors trade as contrarians after large earnings surprises, especially for loser stocks, and that such contrarian trading contributes to post earnings announcement drift (PEAD) and...

We estimate a nominal life-cycle portfolio choice model using shopping coststo generate money demand. The model delivers realistic implications forstock market participation and portfolio composition because money crowdsout other assets at lower levels of wealth. We quantify how...

We propose a new objective for portfolio optimization: a weighted average of the probabilitiesof achieving specific target levels and avoiding specific loss levels. The objective is relatively easyto understand by non-experts, making it easier to calibrate to individuals' risk profiles....

We present evidence from a repeated survey on risky asset holdings carried out on a representative sample of the German population six times between April and June 2020. Given the size of the Covid-19 shock, we find little evidence of portfolio rebalancing in April 2020. In May, however,...

Using transaction-level data from two German banks, we study the effects of smartphones on investor behavior. Comparing trades by the same investor in the same month across different platforms, we find that smartphones increase purchasing of riskier and lottery-type assets and chasing past...