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Review of Finance Vol. 22 No. 5 2018

Skewness, Individual Investor Preference, and the Cross-section of Stock Returns

Tse-Chun Lin; Xin Liu

Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1093/rof/rfx036
Volume
22
Issue
5
Pages
1841-1876
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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