Regulators express concerns with investors’ unquestioning reliance on analysts’ recommendations, which prior research has shown to be associated with lower trading returns. Thus, regulators have published investor guides advising investors to conduct independent research and required analyst...

Overall, 72 subjects invest their endowment in four risky assets. Each combination of assets yields the same expected return and variance of returns. Illusion of expertise prevails when one prefers nevertheless the self-selected portfolio. After being randomly assigned to groups of four subjects...

Using analysts' stock recommendations this paper shows gender heterogeneity in investment advice. The odds for female financial analysts to issue optimistic recommendations are much lower than the odds for male analysts. However, an investor cannot profit from the observed gender differences....