We ask whether the typical investor and the aggregate investor exhibit a bias known as the disposition effect, the tendency to sell investments are held for a profit at a faster rate than investments held for a loss. We analyze all trading activity on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) for the five...

Many public pension funds engage in institutional activism. These funds use the power of their pooled ownership of publicly traded stocks to affect changes in the corporations they own. I review the theory and empirical evidence underlying the motivation for institutional activism. In theory,...

This study compares the profitability of security recommendations issued by investment banks and independent research firms. During the 1996 through mid-2003 time period, the average daily abnormal return to independent research firm buy recommendations exceeds that of the investment banks by...

We document that individual investor trading results in systematic and, more importantly, economically large losses. Using a complete trading history of all investors in Taiwan, we document that the aggregate portfolio of individual investors suffers an annual performance penalty of 3.8...

This paper analyzes the distribution of stock ratings at investment banks and brokerage firms and examines their relation to the profitability of analysts' recommendations. Consistent with prior work, we find that the percentage of buy recommendations increased substantially from 1996-2000....

We test and confirm the hypothesis that individual investors are net buyers of attention-grabbing stocks, e.g., stocks in the news, stocks experiencing high abnormal trading volume, and stocks with extreme one day returns. Attention-driven buying results from the difficulty that investors have...

After a string of years in which security analysts' top stock picks significantly outperformed their pans, the year 2000 was a disaster. During that year the stocks least favorably recommended by analysts earned an annualized market-adjusted return of 48.66 percent while the stocks most highly...

We examine changes in the stock trading behavior and investment performance of 1,607 investors who switch from phone based to online trading during the period 1992 to 1995. We document that young men who are active traders with high incomes and a preference for investing in small growth stocks...

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that traded most earned an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returned 17.9 percent....

The financial press makes frequent and bold claims regarding the performance of investment clubs. One oft quoted figure from a National Association of Investment Club survey states that 60 percent of investment clubs beat the market. Are these claims myth or reality?We analyze the common stock...