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.     

Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?

I test the disposition effect, the tendency of investors to hold losing investments too long and sell winning investments too soon, by analyzing trading records for 10,000 accounts at a large discount brokerage house. These investors demonstrate a strong preference for realizing winners rather than losers. Their behavior does not appear to be motivated by a desire to rebalance portfolios, or to avoid the higher trading costs of low priced stocks. Nor is it justified by subsequent portfolio performance. For taxable investments, it is suboptimal and leads to lower after-tax returns. Tax-motivated selling is most evident in December.     

RANDOM WALK TESTS FOR LATIN AMERICAN EQUITY INDEXES AND INDIVIDUAL FIRMS

In this study we re-examine the presence of random walk in stock prices in Brazil and Mexico. We employ variance ratio tests on weekly stock returns for indexes as well as individual firms. The results reveal mean aversion in Mexico at both the index level and the firm level. In contrast, the Brazil indexes show a greater tendency toward random walk; however, the results for the individual firms suggest mean reversion. The results cannot be attributed to a firm size effect. Evidence is presented in favor of a greater degree of nonsynchronous trading for Brazilian securities than for Mexican securities.     

Do Retail Trades Move Markets?

We study the trading of individual investors using transactiondata and identifying buyer- or seller-initiated trades. We documentfour results: (1) Small trade order imbalance correlates wellwith order imbalance based on trades from retail brokers. (2)Individual investors herd. (3) When measured annually, smalltrade order imbalance forecasts future returns; stocks heavilybought underperform stocks heavily sold by 4.4 percentage pointsthe following year. (4) Over a weekly horizon, small trade orderimbalance reliably predicts returns, but in the opposite direction;stocks heavily bought one week earn strong returns the subsequentweek, while stocks heavily sold earn poor returns.     

Experiences in publishing peer-reviewed research with undergraduate accounting and finance students

This paper describes an educational program involving joint research projects undertaken between faculty and undergraduate accounting and finance students. The goal of the program was to provide undergraduate accounting and finance students a valuable educational experience resulting in a joint peer-reviewed journal publication. The paper discusses issues, concerns, and strategies that were successfully and unsuccessfully employed in conducting and publishing research with undergraduate students. The program was conducted over a six-year period, resulting in ten publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as several conference presentations, proceedings, and awards. Administrators should consider the program described here as one tool in their arsenal to help faculty maintain academic qualifications while simultaneously benefiting students.