Herding and Feedback Trading by Institutional and Individual Investors

We document strong positive correlation between changes in institutional ownership and returns measured over the same period. The result suggests that either institutional investors positive-feedback trade more than individual investors or institutional herding impacts prices more than herding by individual investors. We find evidence that both factors play a role in explaining the relation. We find no evidence, however, of return mean-reversion in the year following large changes in institutional ownership—stocks institutional investors purchase subsequently outperform those they sell. Moreover, institutional herding is positively correlated with lag returns and appears to be related to stock return momentum.     

The Interim Trading Skills of Institutional Investors

Using a large proprietary database of institutional trades, this paper examines the interim (intraquarter) trading skills of institutional investors. We find strong evidence that institutional investors earn significant abnormal returns on their trades within the trading quarter and that interim trading performance is persistent. After transactions costs, our estimates suggest that interim trading skills contribute between 20 and 26 basis points per year to the average fund's abnormal performance. Our findings also indicate that any trading skills documented by previous studies that use quarterly data are biased downwards because of their inability to account for interim trades.     

机构投资者行为与交易量异象

我们验证了在中国资本市场上存在交易量异象,以过去3个月的换手率为基础进行套利,在未来3个月投资者能获取显著的超额回报。使用中期和年度机构持股数据,我们发现机构投资者能识别和利用交易量异象。基于交易量和机构投资者持股比例的信息,我们发现投资者如果买进过去3个月平均交易量最低与机构投资者持股比例最高的一组,同时卖空交易量最高与机构投资者持股比例最低的一组进行交叉套利,他们能在未来3个月获得10.3%的超额回报。     

The Dynamics of Institutional and Individual Trading

We study the daily and intradaily cross‐sectional relation between stock returns and the trading of institutional and individual investors in Nasdaq 100 securities. Based on the previous day's stock return, the top performing decile of securities is 23.9% more likely to be bought in net by institutions (and sold by individuals) than those in the bottom performance decile. Strong contemporaneous daily patterns can largely be explained by net institutional (individual) trading positively (negatively) following past intradaily excess stock returns (or the news associated therein). In comparison, evidence of return predictability and price pressure are economically small.     

机构投资者交易行为特征研究

本文通过研究股票收益变化和机构持股变化之间的关系,发现对于高机构持股股票,过去表现较好的股票会吸引机构增加持仓,且机构增持的股票相对减持的股票的后续表现又更好,而低机构持股股票则不然。这表明机构投资者整体上是采用正反馈即惯性交易策略的,而个体投资者的行为则较为随机。对于缺乏投资经验的个体投资者而言,论文结果意味着他们应当委托机构进行理财如投资于基金。     

Weekend Effect, 'Reverse' Weekend Effect, and Investor Trading Activities

Abstract:   In this study, we document evidence of a 'reverse' weekend effect – whereby Monday returns are significantly positive and they are higher than the returns on other days of the week – over an extended period of eleven years (from 1988 to 1998). We also find that the 'traditional' weekend effect and the 'reverse' effect are related to firm size in that the 'traditional' weekend effect tends to be associated with small firms while the 'reverse' weekend effect tends to be associated with large firms. In addition, we find that during the period in which the 'reverse' weekend effect is observed, Monday returns for large firms tend to follow previous Friday returns when previous Friday returns are positive , but they do not follow the previous Friday returns when Friday returns are negative . Furthermore, we find that during the period in which the 'reverse' weekend effect is observed, Monday returns are positively related to the volume of medium‐size and block transactions, but negatively related to the volume of odd‐lot transactions.     

机构投资者噪声交易行为的理论分析

根据对机构投资者噪声交易行为的理论分析,本文提出由于证券市场在本质上是一个信息市场,天然具有噪声交易动机和行为能力的机构投资者利用个人投资者的认识心理、情绪和投资行为偏差与证券市场制度结构,策略性地实施噪声交易行为,以此加剧信息的不对称性,进而在最大程度上发挥其比较优势、获取超额收益,噪声交易因此成为机构投资者投资行为的本质特征。机构投资者噪声交易行为属于有限理性的主动性噪声交易,噪声交易者风险的分布具有阶段性特征,在机构投资者可控制的范围之内。     

Peer Effects in the Trading Decisions of Individual Investors

This study examines for evidence of peer effects in the trading decisions of individual investors from Mainland China, a country whose cultural and social structures are vastly different from those of Western countries. Cultural differences, as widely documented, play a significant role in social interactions and word-of-mouth behavior. In contrast to US studies, we find robust evidence that the trading decisions of Chinese investors are influenced, via word of mouth, by those of their peers who maintain brokerage accounts at the same branch, but not by those whose accounts are maintained at another branch located in the same city.     

Selling Fast and Buying Slow: Heuristics and Trading Performance of Institutional Investors

Are market experts prone to heuristics, and do these heuristics transfer across buying and selling domains? We investigate this question using a unique data set of institutional investors with portfolios averaging $573 million. A striking finding emerges: While there is evidence of skill in buying, selling decisions underperform substantially, even relative to random-selling strategies. This holds despite the similarity between the two decisions in frequency, substance, and consequences for performance. Evidence suggests an asymmetric allocation of cognitive resources such as attention can explain the discrepancy: We document a systematic, costly heuristic process for selling but not for buying.     

Trading Behaviour of Foreign Institutional Investors: Evidence from Indian Stock Markets

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets - The existence of behavioural bias such as positive feedback trading (PFT) and herding is well researched for advanced economies. This paper explores whether foreign...     

All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors

We test and confirm the hypothesis that individual investorsare net buyers of attention-grabbing stocks, e.g., stocks inthe news, stocks experiencing high abnormal trading volume,and stocks with extreme one-day returns. Attention-driven buyingresults from the difficulty that investors have searching thethousands of stocks they can potentially buy. Individual investorsdo not face the same search problem when selling because theytend to sell only stocks they already own. We hypothesize thatmany investors consider purchasing only stocks that have firstcaught their attention. Thus, preferences determine choicesafter attention has determined the choice set.     

Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors

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 trade most earn an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returns 17.9 percent. The average household earns an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilts its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turns over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.     

Momentum and the Disposition Effect: The Role of Individual Investors

We hypothesize that disposition effect-induced momentum documented in Grinblatt and Han (2005) should be stronger in stocks with greater individual investors’ presence since individual investors are more prone to the disposition effect. We find strong evidence for our hypothesis for a large sample of NYSE/AMEX/NASDAQ stocks from the end of 1980 to 2005. Our results hold across different momentum strategies using alternative ways of defining individual investors’ presence in a stock and maintain even after controlling for variables known to drive momentum. Furthermore, we find that our results are stronger for hard-to-value stocks consistent with the findings of Kumar (2009).     

机构投资者与个人投资者过度自信行为比较研究

本文首先基于我国A股市场机构股票持有数据,构建了不同的投资组合来区分机构投资者与个人投资者的投资行为。然后运用Granger因果检验与SUR估计,探讨了我国证券市场机构投资者与个人投资者是否具有过度自信行为,结果表明无论是机构投资者还是个人投资者在不同市场状态下都存在交易过多的过度自信认知偏差。并且我国证券市场上个人投资者与机构投资者的过度自信程度在不同的市场状态下并无明显差异。最后提出了相关政策建议。     

交易偏好、公司特征与股票收益——基于我国个体投资者交易数据的实证检验

噪音交易是影响股票收益的重要风险因素,对于那些噪音交易活跃、套利成本较高的股票,噪音交易者需求变动对股票价格的影响更为显著。本文以我国个体投资者2006年-2011年的交易数据为样本,按照公司特征对样本股进行分组,发现个体投资者对小盘、低价、高账面市值比、高收益和高特质波动的股票具有更强的交易偏好,且对股票需求的变动存在显著的系统相关性,个体投资者需求变动对股票价格的影响程度与其交易偏好有关。本文的研究结论为个体投资者交易行为理论提供了有价值的实证支持。     

Trading Returns for the Weekend Effect Using Intraday Data

The existence of the weekend effect has been documented as early as 1885. This paper examines whether the serial dependence in returns around weekends and the magnitude of negative Friday returns can be used to produce superior trading returns. We find some success for this endeavor after accounting for transaction costs (including the bid/ask spread), especially when trading is confined to weekends for which there are large negative Friday returns and to positions opened on Friday afternoons. The effect of stocks trading ex-dividend on Mondays does not appear to bias our results.     

Individual Investor Trading and Return Patterns around Earnings Announcements

This paper provides evidence of informed trading by individual investors around earnings announcements using a unique data set of NYSE stocks. We show that intense aggregate individual investor buying (selling) predicts large positive (negative) abnormal returns on and after earnings announcement dates. We decompose abnormal returns following the event into information and liquidity provision components, and show that about half of the returns can be attributed to private information. We also find that individuals trade in both return‐contrarian and news‐contrarian manners after earnings announcements. The latter behavior has the potential to slow the adjustment of prices to earnings news.     

Security Analysis and Trading Patterns When Some Investors Receive Information Before Others

In existing models of information acquisition, all informed investors receive their information at the same time. This article analyzes trading behavior and equilibrium information acquisition when some investors receive common private information before others. The model implies that, under some conditions, investors will focus only on a subset of securities (“herding”), while neglecting other securities with identical exogenous characteristics. In addition, the model is consistent with empirical correlations that are suggestive of oft-cited trading strategies such as profit taking (short-term position reversal) and following the leader (mimicking earlier trades).     

机构投资者社会责任刍议

“超常规、创造性发展机构投资”的根源和归宿在于确立机构投资的社会责任一一规范投资行为，保护投资环境，促进中国证券市场成熟健康发展。在这个循环命题中，机构投资的社会责任既是“超常规、创造性”的因，又是“超常规、创造性”的果。     

机构投资者与国债市场改革

从世界各国的实际情况来看，大多数国家政府债券的主要持有人都经历了由个人投资向机构投资的转变。我国国债机构投资主要是银行和非银行金融机构，表现出极大的偏向性和垄断性。我国应大力培育各类机构投资，推进国债市场改革。