This article documents a link between trading and diversification by using detailed trading records from a Swedish discount broker matched with individual tax records. Diversification is measured by the investors’ stake size, defined as the fraction of their risky financial wealth invested in individual stocks through the broker under study. High-stake investors have concentrated portfolios, trade more, and achieve lower trading performance. They share several features with those who trade excessively, namely lower income, wealth, age, and education, suggesting that they lack investment expertise. The results directly imply that trading losses in the cross-section are mainly borne by those who can least afford them.

We survey a large sample of Swedish households and connect the responses to administrative data to relate pro-environmental attitudes and values to actual investment decisions. Pro-environment households are not more likely to hold pro-environment portfolios. This results from financial disengagement: they are less likely to own stocks, check pension balances, or make green active retirement planning choices. Green financial engagement is stronger in settings where financial literacy is higher or where informational hurdles are lower. Informational barriers appear to prevent financial market prices and returns from fully reflecting household environmental preferences.

Using data from the Stockholm Stock Exchange (SSE), we study the value added by (as distinct from the abnormal returns to) analysts’ recommendations. Recommending brokers’ clients trade profitably around positive recommendations at the expense of other brokers’ clients. Significant profits come from transactions before recommendation dates. Value added is greatest for upgrades to large caps, and largely insignificant for downgrades and recommendations of small caps, despite high abnormal returns. Brokers making profitable recommendations generate abnormally high commission income, recouping much of their clients’ abnormal profits, and their abnormal commission income varies in line with the abnormal profits for their clients.

We measure financial literacy among LinkedIn members, complementing standard questions with additional questions that allow us to gauge self-perceptions of financial literacy. Average financial literacy is surprisingly low given the demographics of our sample: fewer than two-thirds of chief financial officers, chief executive officers, and chief operating officers complete the test correctly. Financial literacy, precautionary savings and retirement planning are positively correlated, but this is mostly driven by perceived, not actual, literacy: controlling for self-perceptions, actual literacy has low predictive power. Perceptions drive decision-making among low-literacy respondents and are associated with mistaken beliefs about financial products and less willingness to accept financial advice.