Abstract This paper examines the characteristics and pricing of stocks that are actively traded by speculative retail investors. We find that stocks with high retail trading proportion (RTP) have strong lottery features and they attract retail investors with strong gambling propensity. Furthermore, these stocks tend to be overpriced and earn significantly negative alpha. The average monthly return differential between the extreme RTP quintiles is −0.60%. This negative RTP premium is stronger among stocks that have lottery features or arelocated in regions where people exhibit stronger gambling propensity. Collectively, these results indicate that speculative retail trading affects stock prices.

This paper examines whether political activism increases people's propensity to participate in the stock market. Our key conjecture is that politically active people follow political news more actively, which increases their chance of being exposed to financial news. Consequently, their information gathering costs are likely to be lower and the propensity to participate in the market would be higher. We find support for this hypothesis using multiple micro-level data sets, state-level data from the US, and cross-country data from Europe. Irrespective of their political affiliation, politically active individuals are 9–25% more likely to participate in the stock market. Using residence in “battleground” states and several other geographic instruments, we demonstrate that greater political activism reduces information gathering costs and causes higher market participation rates. Further, consistent with our conjecture, we find that politically active individuals spend about 30 minutes more on news daily and appear more knowledgeable about the economy and the markets.

Abstract Using a demographics-based proxy for smartness, we show that the portfolio distortions of “smart” investors reflect an informational advantage, while the distortions of “dumb” investors reflect psychological biases. Specifically, smart investors outperform dumb investors by about 3% annually on a risk-adjusted basis. Furthermore, among investors with high portfolio distortions, smart investors outperform passive benchmarks by 2%, and the smart-dumb performance differential is 5%. At the stock level, a portfolio of stocks with smart investor clientele outperforms the dumb clientele portfolio by 3.50% annually. These findings suggest that behavioral and information-based explanations for portfolio distortions apply to distinct subsets of investors.

Abstract We examine whether the trading activities of retail and institutional investors cause comovements in stock returns. Around stock splits, retail trading correlations (RTCs) decrease with stocks in the presplit price range and increase with stocks in the post-split price range. These shifts in RTCs induce changes in return comovements. In the cross section, return comovements among low-priced stocks are amplified when retail trades are more correlated and when aggregate uncertainty amplifies behavioral biases. We find similar patterns among local stocks and when firms change their corporate headquarters. In contrast to retail trading, institutional trading attenuates return comovements.

ABSTRACT This study examines whether local stock returns vary with local business cycles in a predictable manner. We find that U.S. state portfolios earn higher future returns when state‐level unemployment rates are higher and housing collateral ratios are lower. During the 1978 to 2009 period, geography‐based trading strategies earn annualized risk‐adjusted returns of 5%. This abnormal performance reflects time‐varying systematic risks and local‐trading induced mispricing. Consistent with the mispricing explanation, the evidence of predictability is stronger among firms with low visibility and high local ownership. Nonlocal domestic and foreign investors arbitrage away the predictable patterns in local returns in 1 year.