We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors from Sweden’s Premium Pension System. We find that active investors earn higher returns and risk-adjusted returns than do inactive investors. A performance decomposition analysis reveals that most outperformance by active investors is the result of active investors successfully timing mutual funds and asset classes. While activity is beneficial for some investors, extreme flows out of mutual funds affect funds’ net asset values negatively for all investors. Financial advisors, by contributing to coordinate investments and redemptions, exacerbate these negative effects. Received March 10, 2015; editorial decision September 8, 2016 by Editor Andrew Karolyi

Collecting large asset managers’ capital market assumptions, we revisit the relationships between subjective equity premium expectations, equity valuations, and financial portfolios. In contrast to the well-documented extrapolative expectations of retail investors, asset managers’ equity premium expectations are countercyclical: they are high (low) when valuations are low (high). We find that asset managers’ portfolios reflect their heterogeneous expectations: allocation funds of asset managers with larger U.S. equity premium expectations invest significantly more in U.S. equities. The sensitivity of portfolios to expectations seems to be muted by investment mandates and is smaller than the one predicted by a standard portfolio choice model.

We examine the portfolio choice of an investor with generalized disappointment-aversion preferences who faces log returns described by a normal-exponential model. We derive a three-fund separation strategy: the investor allocates wealth to a risk-free asset, a standard mean-variance efficient fund, and an additional fund reflecting return asymmetries. The optimal portfolio is characterized by the investor’s endogenous effective risk aversion and implicit asymmetry aversion. In empirical applications, we find that disappointment aversion is associated with much larger asymmetry aversion than are standard preferences. Our model explains patterns in popular portfolio advice across both risk appetites and investment horizons. Received November 12, 2015; editorial decision July 20, 2016 by Editor Stefan Nagel.