We find a robust negative relation between skewness/lottery-like features, proxied by maximum return (MAX) over the last month, and future returns for stocks preferred by individual investors. This negative relation is nonexistent for the rest of stocks. We identify stocks preferred by individual investors through bundling ten stock characteristics associated with their stock preferences. The negative relation between MAX and future return is produced by the stocks preferred by individuals that account for less than 5% of the overall market capitalization. Our results are robust to alternative definitions of MAX and lottery-like features such as total, idiosyncratic, and expected skewness.

We aim to make two contributions to the literature on the effects of transaction costs on financial price volatility. First, by augmenting a double differencing approach with a research design with three ingredients (a common set of companies simultaneously listed on two stock exchanges, binding capital controls, and different timing of changes in transaction costs), we obtain a control group that has identical corporate fundamentals as the treatment group. We apply the research design to Chinese stocks that are cross-listed in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Second, we allow transaction costs to have different effects in markets with different maturity. We find a significantly negative relationship, on average, between stamp duty increase and price volatility. However, this average effect masks some important heterogeneity. In particular, when institutional investors have become a significant part of the traders’ pool, we find an opposite effect. Overall, our results suggest that a Tobin tax could work in an immature market, but can backfire in a more developed market.