Long-short anomaly returns are strongly related to the day of the week. Anomalies for which the speculative leg is the short (long) leg experience the highest (lowest) returns on Monday. The opposite pattern is observed on Friday. The effects are large. Monday (Friday) alone accounts for over 100% of returns for all anomalies examined for which the short (long) leg is the speculative leg. Consistent with a mispricing explanation, the pattern is driven by the speculative leg. The observed patterns are consistent with the abundance of evidence in the psychology literature that mood increases on Friday and decreases on Monday.

Using investor-level data, I document that the disposition effect is absent following a stock split; inattentive investors may fail to split-adjust their reference point, confusing the winner versus loser status of their holdings. Consistent with the disposition effect impeding the incorporation of news, ex-date returns are significantly higher for split stocks with higher gains. However, the magnitude is small relative to momentum, and momentum remains robustly present among this sample of stocks void of the disposition effect. The results suggest that the disposition effect may slow the incorporation of news, but not to the extent that it alone explains momentum.

Sentiment should exhibit its strongest effects on asset prices at times when valuations are most subjective. Accordingly, we show that a one-standard-deviation increase in aggregate uncertainty amplifies the predictive ability of sentiment for market returns by two to four times relative to when uncertainty is at its mean. For the cross-section of returns, the predictive ability of sentiment for assets expected to be most sensitive to sentiment, including existing measures of both risk and mispricing, is substantially larger in times of higher uncertainty. The results hold for both daily and monthly proxies for sentiment and for various proxies for uncertainty.

We explore the psychology of stock price levels and provide evidence that investors suffer from a nominal price illusion in which they overestimate the room to grow for low-priced stocks relative to high-priced stocks. While it has become increasingly clear that nominal price levels influence investor behavior, why prices matter to investors is a question that as of yet has gone unanswered. We find widespread evidence that investors systematically overestimate the skewness of low-priced stocks. In the broad cross-section of stocks, we find that investors substantially overweight the importance of price when forming skewness expectations. Asset pricing implications of our findings are borne out in the options market. A zero-cost option portfolio strategy that exploits investor overestimation of skewness for low-priced stocks generates significant abnormal returns. Finally, investor expectations of future skewness increase drastically on days that a stock undergoes a split to a lower nominal price. Empirically, however, future physical skewness decreases following splits.

We study whether industry familiarity is an advantage in stock trading by exploring the trading patterns of industry insiders in their own personal portfolios. To do so, we identify accounts of industry insiders in a large data set provided by a retail discount broker. We find that insiders trade firms from their own industry more frequently. Furthermore, they earn abnormal returns exclusively when trading own-industry stocks, especially obscure stocks (small, low analyst coverage, high volatility). In a battery of tests, we find no evidence of the use of private information. The results are most consistent with the interpretation that industry familiarity is an advantage in stock trading.

Following the Global Settlement, analysts extensively use a top pick designation allowing for greater granularity of information among buy recommended stocks, but conflicts of interest can potentially influence this designation. Examining a novel sample of top picks, we find that a calendar-time portfolio of top picks generates an abnormal performance of 17.6% per year. Top picks have greater investment value than do buy recommendations and alternative analyst investment strategies. Both institutional and retail investors trade in response to top picks. However, only institutional investors appear to identify top picks that have greater investment value when they are announced.

Short‐term trade ideas are a component of analyst research highly valued by institutional investors. Using a novel and comprehensive database, we find that trade ideas have a stock price impact at least as large as recommendation and target price changes. Trade ideas based on expectations of future events are more informative than those identifying incomplete incorporation of past information in stock prices. Analysts with better access to a firm's management produce better trade ideas. Institutional investors trade in the direction of trade ideas. Investors following trade ideas can earn significant abnormal returns, consistent with analysts possessing valuable short‐term stock‐picking skills.