We provide an overview of research on the stock trading behavior of individual investors. This research documents that individual investors (1) underperform standard benchmarks (e.g., a low cost index fund), (2) sell winning investments while holding losing investments (the “disposition...

We study the trading behavior of individual investors using the Trade and Quotes (TAQ) and Institute for the Study of Security Markets (ISSM) transaction data over the period 1983 to 2001. We document four results: (1) Order imbalance based on buyer- and sellerinitiated small trades from the...

We argue that the purchase decisions of mutual fund investors are influenced by salient, attention-grabbing information. Investors are more sensitive to salient in-your-face fees, like front-end loads and commissions, than operating expenses; they are likely to buy funds that attract their...