Why do individuals not participate in the stock market?

We use a representative survey to study economic and non-economic factors that affect stock market participation. We find that many individuals suffer from inertia in the sense that they do not want to take the time and effort to invest in stocks. Inertia also explains stock market participation in addition to earlier documented factors such as actual and perceived financial literacy, trust, and the personal equity risk premium (PERP). A high percentage of non-investors (66%) assert that they will never invest in stocks. We find that inertia affects this assertion both directly and indirectly through factors such as age and gender.     

Corporate Scandals and Household Stock Market Participation

We show that, after the revelation of corporate fraud in a state, household stock market participation in that state decreases. Households decrease holdings in fraudulent as well as nonfraudulent firms, even if they do not hold stocks in fraudulent firms. Within a state, households with more lifetime experience of corporate fraud hold less equity. Following the exogenous increase in fraud revelation due to Arthur Andersen's demise, states with more Arthur Andersen clients experience a larger decrease in stock market participation. We provide evidence that the documented effect is likely to reflect a loss of trust in the stock market.     

Are investors consistent in their trading strategies? An examination of individual investor-level data

While it has been demonstrated that momentum or contrarian trading strategies can be profitable in a range of institutional settings, less evidence is available concerning the actual trading strategies investors adopt. Standard definitions of momentum or contrarian trading strategies imply that a given investor applies the same strategy to both their buy and sell trades, which need not be the case. Using investor-level, transaction-based data from China, where tax effects are neutral, we examine investors' buy-sell decisions separately to investigate how past returns impact differentially on the trading strategies investors adopt when buying and selling stock. After controlling for a wide range of stock characteristics, extreme price changes and portfolio value, a clear asymmetry in trading is observed; with investors displaying momentum behavior when buying stocks, but contrarian behavior when selling stocks. This asymmetry in behavior is not driven purely by reactions to stock characteristics or extreme stocks. We discuss behavioral and cultural explanations for our findings.     

Do Industries Explain Momentum?

This paper documents a strong and prevalent momentum effect in industry components of stock returns which accounts for much of the individual stock momentum anomaly. Specifically, momentum investment strategies, which buy past winning stocks and sell past losing stocks, are significantly less profitable once we control for industry momentum. By contrast, industry momentum investment strategies, which buy stocks from past winning industries and sell stocks from past losing industries, appear highly profitable, even after controlling for size, book-to-market equity, individual stock momentum, the cross-sectional dispersion in mean returns, and potential microstructure influences.     

Strategic trading in the wrong direction by a large institutional insider

Many theoretical papers suggest that large informed traders should make misleading or random trades to disguise their trading. Alternatively, informed traders may trade purely on their estimate of stock value. This paper examines the trading behavior of a large institutional insider that periodically trades in the wrong direction, i.e., makes occasional sell (buy) trades within packages of buy (sell) trades. Using a hand-collected data set, we find that three quarters of the trade packages include wrong-direction trades. Wrong trades appear to be used mostly to disguise right-direction trades. We find that the wrong-trade stocks are larger and have less noisy returns, hence, they lack natural disguise. Wrong trades are relatively small, used to accentuate return volatility, distributed evenly during a package of trades, and are not consistently profitable.     

我国上市公司高送转公告效应的实证研究

为检验上市公司定高送转预案公告发布对其股票价格的影响,本文以2009年至2010年沪深两市推出高送转预案的285家上市公司为样本,选取公告日前10日至公告日后20日为事件窗口,运用事件研究法对高送转公告效应进行实证研究。结果表明：中国股市具有明显的高送转公告效应,上市公司高送转预案公告发布前后股票具有显著的正价格效应,会产生持续的累计异常正收益;然而,由于信息不对称,部分投资者通常会提前获得有关高送转的内幕信息并提前买入,并以此获得可观的超额收益,而普通投资在公告发布后买入只能获得小部分的超额收益并且需要承担更大的风险。     

A Tale of Two Anomalies: Higher Returns of Low‐Risk Stocks and Return Seasonality

Prior studies have shown that low beta and low volatility stocks earn higher average returns than high beta and high volatility stocks, contradicting the prediction of the capital asset pricing model and the fundamental relationship between risk and return. In this paper, we demonstrate that this phenomenon is driven by the seasonality of stock returns. We show that the risk‐return tradeoff does hold in the nonsummer months, and that switching to a portfolio of low‐risk stocks in summer outperforms—both in terms of absolute and in risk‐adjusted returns—buy and hold strategies as well as the Sell in May strategy of switching to treasury bills in summer.     

Which past returns affect trading volume?

Anecdotal evidence suggests and recent theoretical models argue that past stock returns affect subsequent stock trading volume. We study 3,000 individual investors over a 51 month period to test this apparent link between past returns and volume using several different panel regression models (linear panel regressions, negative binomial panel regressions, Tobit panel regressions). We find that both past market returns as well as past portfolio returns affect trading activity of individual investors (as measured by stock portfolio turnover, the number of stock transactions, and the propensity to trade stocks in a given month). After high portfolio returns, investors buy high risk stocks and reduce the number of stocks in their portfolio. High past market returns do not lead to higher risk taking or underdiversification. We argue that the only explanations for our findings are overconfidence theories based on biased self-attribution and differences of opinion explanations for high levels of trading activity.     

社会养老保险“多轨制”与家庭股票市场参与

依据中国家庭金融调查数据,运用Probit模型和Tobit模型,考量社会养老保险“多轨制”对家庭股票市场参与的影响。结果显示：社会养老保险“多轨制”通过缓解收入风险、健康风险与风险厌恶程度等,影响家庭股票市场参与;家庭净资产水平和信任水平异质性,影响家庭股票市场参与差异。其中,参加企职保或机关事业单位养老保险促进家庭股票市场参与显著,参加城乡居保影响不显著。鉴于此,应进一步整合社会养老保险“多轨制”,提高城乡居保的养老保障水平,充分发挥社会养老保险对家庭股票市场参与的促进作用。     

The Riskiness of REITs Surrounding the October 1997 Stock Market Decline

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are viewed as low risk/low return stocks that exhibit defensive stock characteristics. The stock market decline of October 1997 provides an excellent opportunity to examine the riskiness of REITs during high levels of market uncertainty. We find that the decline in REIT stock values was about one-half as large as the decline of non-REIT stocks. Additionally, market uncertainty on the event day was shown with an increased bid-ask spread for all stocks. On the following day when the market decline was partially reversed, the bid-ask spreads continued to increase for non-REIT stocks, but declined for REIT stocks. This suggests that REITs, like defensive stocks in general, are less prone to significant declines during market-wide disturbances. Also, we order stocks based on the standard deviation measures of risk and show that this risk measure explains the cross-section of returns for non-REITs but is not valid for REITs.     

Investor preferences and portfolio selection: is diversification an appropriate strategy?

This paper analyzes the relationship between diversification and several distributional characteristics that have risk implications for stock returns. We develop a flexible three-parameter distribution to model the stock returns. Using data on the current 30 DJIA stocks, we show that an investor's strategy on diversification depends on the measures of risk for particular concerns. For example, investors who desire to increase positive skewness would hold a less diversified portfolio, while those who care more about extreme losses would hold a more diversified portfolio. Experimenting with a more general pool of stocks yields the same conclusions.     

The price of sin: The effects of social norms on markets

We provide evidence for the effects of social norms on markets by studying “sin” stocks—publicly traded companies involved in producing alcohol, tobacco, and gaming. We hypothesize that there is a societal norm against funding operations that promote vice and that some investors, particularly institutions subject to norms, pay a financial cost in abstaining from these stocks. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that sin stocks are less held by norm-constrained institutions such as pension plans as compared to mutual or hedge funds that are natural arbitrageurs, and they receive less coverage from analysts than do stocks of otherwise comparable characteristics. Sin stocks also have higher expected returns than otherwise comparable stocks, consistent with them being neglected by norm-constrained investors and facing greater litigation risk heightened by social norms. Evidence from corporate financing decisions and the performance of sin stocks outside the US also suggest that norms affect stock prices and returns.     

The medium is the message: Learning channels,financial literacy,and stock market participation

This paper investigates the effects of learning channels on stock market participation. More specifically, we investigate the direct effects of learning about financial matters from one's private network, financial advisors, and the media, as well as the moderating effects of financial literacy on the relationship between learning from these channels and stock market participation. Analyzing a unique cross-section data that combine survey data and bank register data on individual retail investors, we find that media is the only learning channel that increases the likelihood of owning stocks and the portfolio share invested in stocks. We also find that financial literacy has a significant moderating effect: Interactions point to the joint importance of learning from media and financial literacy for individuals' stock market participation. Our findings suggest implications to policymakers when designing financial education programs.     

Optimal Life-Cycle Asset Allocation: Understanding the Empirical Evidence

We show that a life‐cycle model with realistically calibrated uninsurable labor income risk and moderate risk aversion can simultaneously match stock market participation rates and asset allocation decisions conditional on participation. The key ingredients of the model are Epstein–Zin preferences, a fixed stock market entry cost, and moderate heterogeneity in risk aversion. Households with low risk aversion smooth earnings shocks with a small buffer stock of assets, and consequently most of them (optimally) never invest in equities. Therefore, the marginal stockholders are (endogenously) more risk averse, and as a result they do not invest their portfolios fully in stocks.     

The Buying and Selling Behavior of Individual Investors at the Turn of the Year

The average returns on low-capitalization stocks are unusually high relative to those on large-capitalization stocks in early January, a phenomenon known as the turn-of-the-year effect. This paper finds that the ratio of stock purchases to sales by individual investors displays a seasonal pattern, with individuals having a below-normal buy/sell ratio in late December and an above-normal ratio in early January. Year-to-year variation in the early January buy/sell ratio explains forty-six percent of the year-to-year variation in the turn-of-the-year effect during 1971–1985.     

Individual Investors' Sentiment and Temporary Stock Price Pressure

Using data for the Hong Kong stock market, where individual investors' sentiment is likely to be influential, this study finds that the publication of individual investors' sentiment temporarily affects stock prices regardless of the publication's incompetence in predicting stock returns. Specifically, when the publication reports that more and more investors are optimistic, the return on the day just after the publication is higher and the return several days later is lower. Furthermore, the results are strongest for small stocks, and weakest for large stocks. It seems that some individual investors buy (sell) stocks when others, as reported by the publication, are optimistic (pessimistic), and that the trading causes temporary buying (selling) pressure initially and price reversals afterwards.     

The trading behavior of institutions and individuals in Chinese equity markets

This paper employs a unique data set to analyze the trading behavior of 4.74 million individual and institutional investors across Mainland China. Results show that groups of individual investors with varying trade values (as proxies for wealth levels) engage in different trading strategies. Chinese institutions are momentum investors, while less wealthy Chinese individual investors at large are contrarian investors. The results also indicate that a small group of wealthiest Chinese individuals tend to behave like institutions when they buy stocks, and behave like less wealthy individuals when they sell. Furthermore, only the trading activities of institutions and of wealthiest individuals can affect future stock volatility, but those of Chinese individual investors at large have no predictive power for future stock returns.     

Asset Market Participation and Portfolio Choice over the Life‐Cycle

Using error‐free data on life‐cycle portfolio allocations of a large sample of Norwegian households, we document a double adjustment as households age: a rebalancing of the portfolio composition away from stocks as they approach retirement and stock market exit after retirement. When structurally estimating an extended life‐cycle model, the parameter combination that best fits the data is one with a relatively large risk aversion, a small per‐period participation cost, and a yearly probability of a large stock market loss in line with the frequency of stock market crashes in Norway.     

Evidence on the Characteristics of Cross Sectional Variation in Stock Returns

Firm sizes and book-to-market ratios are both highly correlated with the average returns of common stocks. Fama and French (1993) argue that the association between these characteristics and returns arise because the characteristics are proxies for nondiversifiable factor risk. In contrast, the evidence in this article indicates that the return premia on small capitalization and high book-to-market stocks does not arise because of the comovements of these stocks with pervasive factors. It is the characteristics rather than the covariance structure of returns that appear to explain the cross-sectional variation in stock returns.     

Effect of collateral characteristics on bank performance: Evidence from collateralized stocks in Taiwan

Taiwanese law requires directors of listed firms to disclose their stocks collateralized at banks creating the possibility of examining the characteristics of collateralized stocks and their influence on bank performance. This study demonstrates that the risk (value) attributes of collateralized stocks increase (reduce) bank efficiency yet reduce (increase) bank profits. Government-owned banks but not private banks require sufficiently high margins to prevent stock loans from non-performing. Furthermore, banks charge higher interest to cover the non-performing risk. Directors who lack funds, hold high turnover stocks, and/or have weak relationships with their banks prefer to collateralize their stocks at private banks.