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The Review of Asset Pricing Studies Vol. 11 No. 3 2021

Can Individual Investors Beat the Market?

Joshua D. Coval1; David Hirshleifer2; Tyler Shumway3

1 Harvard Business School · 2 University of California at Irvine · 3 Marriott School of Business, Brigham Young University,

Abstract

We document persistent superior trading performance among a subset of individual investors. Investors classified in the top performance decile in the first half of our sample subsequently earn risk-adjusted returns of about 6% per year. These returns are not confined to stocks in which the investors are likely to have inside information, nor are they driven by illiquid stocks. Our results suggest that skilled individual investors exploit market inefficiencies (or perhaps conditional risk premiums) to earn abnormal profits, above and beyond any profits available from well-known strategies based on size, value, momentum, or earnings announcements. (JEL G11, G14, G40, G51) Received: October 11, 2020 Editorial decision: January 4, 2021 Editor: Jeffrey Pontiff

DOI
10.1093/rapstu/raab017
Volume
11
Issue
3
Pages
552-579
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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