We study the joint portfolio and information choice problem of institutional investors who are concerned about their performance relative to a benchmark. Benchmarking influences information choices through two distinct economic mechanisms. First, benchmarking reduces the number of shares in investors’ portfolios that are sensitive to information. Hence, the value of private information declines. Second, benchmarking limits investors’ willingness to speculate. This not only reduces the value of private information but also adversely affects information aggregation. In equilibrium, investors acquire less information and informational efficiency declines. As a result, return volatility increases, and less-benchmarked institutional investors outperform more-benchmarked ones. Received May 31, 2017; editorial decision July 4, 2018 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. Authors have furnished supplementary code, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

We incorporate trading fees into a dynamic, multiagent general‐equilibrium model in which traders optimally decide when to trade. For that purpose, we propose an innovative algorithm that synchronizes the traders. Securities prices are not so much affected by the payment of the fees itself, but rather by the trade‐off that the traders face between smoothing consumption and smoothing holdings. In calibrated examples, the interest rate and welfare decline with trading fees, while risk premia and volatilities increase. Liquidity risk and expected liquidity are priced, leading to deviations from the consumption‐CAPM. With trading fees, capital is slow‐moving, generating slow price reversal.