IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jfinqa/v43y2008i03p613-655_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Portfolio Concentration and the Performance of Individual Investors

Author

Listed:
  • Ivković, Zoran
  • Sialm, Clemens
  • Weisbenner, Scott

Abstract

This paper tests whether information advantages help explain why some individual investors concentrate their stock portfolios in a few stocks. Stock investments made by households that choose to concentrate their brokerage accounts in a few stocks outperform those made by households with more diversified accounts (especially among those with large portfolios). Excess returns of concentrated relative to diversified portfolios are stronger for stocks not included in the S&P 500 index and local stocks, potentially reflecting concentracted investors' successful exploitation of information asymmetries. Controlling for households' average investment abilities, their trades and holdings perform better when their portfolios include fewer stocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Ivković, Zoran & Sialm, Clemens & Weisbenner, Scott, 2008. "Portfolio Concentration and the Performance of Individual Investors," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(3), pages 613-655, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:43:y:2008:i:03:p:613-655_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022109000004233/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William N. Goetzmann & Alok Kumar, 2008. "Equity Portfolio Diversification," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 12(3), pages 433-463.
    2. Ning Zhu, 2002. "The Local Bias of Individual Investors," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm272, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Sep 2009.
    3. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2000. "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 773-806, April.
    4. French, Kenneth R & Poterba, James M, 1991. "Investor Diversification and International Equity Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 222-226, May.
    5. Blume, Marshall E & Friend, Irwin, 1975. "The Asset Structure of Individual Portfolios and Some Implications for Utility Functions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 30(2), pages 585-603, May.
    6. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2005. "On the Industry Concentration of Actively Managed Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1983-2011, August.
    7. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    8. Joshua D Coval & David Hirshleifer & Tyler Shumway, 2021. "Can Individual Investors Beat the Market?," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 552-579.
    9. Shlomo Benartzi, 2001. "Excessive Extrapolation and the Allocation of 401(k) Accounts to Company Stock," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1747-1764, October.
    10. Joshua D. Coval & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 2001. "The Geography of Investment: Informed Trading and Asset Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(4), pages 811-841, August.
    11. Kelly, Morgan, 1995. "All their eggs in one basket: Portfolio diversification of US households," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 87-96, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Y. Campbell, 2006. "Household Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1553-1604, August.
    2. Zoran Ivković & Scott Weisbenner, 2005. "Local Does as Local Is: Information Content of the Geography of Individual Investors' Common Stock Investments," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 267-306, February.
    3. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    4. Daniel Barth, 2018. "The Costs and Beliefs Implied by Direct Stock Ownership," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5263-5288, November.
    5. Kumar, Alok, 2007. "Do the diversification choices of individual investors influence stock returns?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 362-390, November.
    6. Kristjan Liivamägi, 2015. "Investor Education and Portfolio Diversification on the Stock Market," Research in Economics and Business: Central and Eastern Europe, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology, vol. 7(1).
    7. Camille Magron & Maxime Merli, 2012. "Stocks repurchase and sophistication of individual investors," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2012-02, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.
    8. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    9. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2008. "Financial Literacy and Portfolio Diversification," Economics Working Papers ECO2008/31, European University Institute.
    10. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    11. Green, T. Clifton & Jame, Russell, 2013. "Company name fluency, investor recognition, and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 813-834.
    12. John R. Graham & Campbell R. Harvey & Hai Huang, 2009. "Investor Competence, Trading Frequency, and Home Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(7), pages 1094-1106, July.
    13. Oehler, Andreas & Wanger, Hans Philipp, 2020. "Household portfolio optimization with XTFs? An empirical study using the SHS-base," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    14. Meyer, Steffen & Urban, Linda & Ahlswede, Sophie, 2015. "Does a personalized feedback on investment success mitigate investment mistakes of private investors? Answers from large natural field experiment," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112988, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Abrahamson, Martin, 2016. "“Rookies to the stock market: A portrait of new shareholders”," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 565-576.
    16. Berry, Thomas & Gamble, Keith Jacks, 2013. "Informed local trading prior to earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 505-525.
    17. Maximilian Koestner & Benjamin Loos & Steffen Meyer & Andreas Hackethal, 2017. "Do individual investors learn from their mistakes?," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(5), pages 669-703, July.
    18. Itzhak Venezia, 2018. "Lecture Notes in Behavioral Finance," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 10751, January.
    19. Nicholas Reinholtz & Philip M. Fernbach & Bart de Langhe, 2021. "Do People Understand the Benefit of Diversification?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7322-7343, December.
    20. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2007. "Down or Out: Assessing the Welfare Costs of Household Investment Mistakes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(5), pages 707-747, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:43:y:2008:i:03:p:613-655_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jfq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.