Since insider transactions are implemented through personal accounts, the NYSE classifies these trades as retail transactions. Indeed, imbalances of retail trading and insider trading move in lockstep and predict stock returns in the cross-section. A high-minus-low strategy in retail trading...

We find that inventory productivity strongly predicts future stock returns among a sample of publicly listed U.S. retailers during the period from 1985 to 2010. A zero-cost portfolio investment strategy, which consists of buying from the two highest and selling from the two lowest quintiles...

Retail order imbalance positively correlates with returns in the days following trades. However, in aggregate, retail investor trades lose money over these same periods. Why? 1) While order imbalance tests value or equally weight stocks, retail purchases are concentrated in stocks earning large...