IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v178y2018icp360-397.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Probability weighting, stop-loss and the disposition effect

Author

Listed:
  • Henderson, Vicky
  • Hobson, David
  • Tse, Alex S.L.

Abstract

In this paper we study a continuous-time, optimal stopping model of an asset sale with prospect theory preferences under pre-commitment. We show for a wide range of value and probability weighting functions, including those of Tversky and Kahneman (1992), that the optimal prospect takes the form of a stop-loss threshold and a distribution over gains. It is skewed with a long right tail. This is consistent with both the widespread use of stop-loss strategies in financial markets, and recent experimental evidence. Moreover, our model with probability weighting in tandem with the S-shaped value function makes predictions for the disposition effect which match in magnitude that calculated by Odean (1998).

Suggested Citation

  • Henderson, Vicky & Hobson, David & Tse, Alex S.L., 2018. "Probability weighting, stop-loss and the disposition effect," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 360-397.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:178:y:2018:i:c:p:360-397
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.10.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053118306446
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2018.10.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. De Giorgi, Enrico G. & Legg, Shane, 2012. "Dynamic portfolio choice and asset pricing with narrow framing and probability weighting," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 951-972.
    2. Shlomo Benartzi & Richard H. Thaler, 1995. "Myopic Loss Aversion and the Equity Premium Puzzle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 73-92.
    3. Polkovnichenko, Valery & Zhao, Feng, 2013. "Probability weighting functions implied in options prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 580-609.
    4. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2009. "Fight or Flight? Portfolio Rebalancing by Individual Investors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 301-348.
    5. Amit Kothiyal & Vitalie Spinu & Peter Wakker, 2011. "Prospect theory for continuous distributions: A preference foundation," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 195-210, June.
    6. Zuo Quan Xu & Xun Yu Zhou, 2011. "Optimal stopping under probability distortion," Papers 1103.1755, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2013.
    7. Urs Fischbacher & Gerson Hoffmann & Simeon Schudy, 2017. "The Causal Effect of Stop-Loss and Take-Gain Orders on the Disposition Effect," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2110-2129.
    8. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    9. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    10. David Genesove & Christopher Mayer, 2001. "Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1233-1260.
    11. Jennifer Conrad & Robert F. Dittmar & Eric Ghysels, 2013. "Ex Ante Skewness and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(1), pages 85-124, February.
    12. Lei Feng & Mark Seasholes, 2005. "Do Investor Sophistication and Trading Experience Eliminate Behavioral Biases in Financial Markets?," Review of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 305-351, September.
    13. Kaustia, Markku, 2010. "Prospect Theory and the Disposition Effect," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 791-812, June.
    14. Machina, Mark J, 1989. "Dynamic Consistency and Non-expected Utility Models of Choice under Uncertainty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 1622-1668, December.
    15. Henderson, Vicky & Hobson, David & Tse, Alex S.L., 2017. "Randomized strategies and prospect theory in a dynamic context," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 287-300.
    16. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang, 2008. "Stocks as Lotteries: The Implications of Probability Weighting for Security Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2066-2100, December.
    17. Allen M. Poteshman & Vitaly Serbin, 2003. "Clearly Irrational Financial Market Behavior: Evidence from the Early Exercise of Exchange Traded Stock Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(1), pages 37-70, February.
    18. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2001. "What Makes Investors Trade?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 589-616, April.
    19. Terrance Odean, 1998. "Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1775-1798, October.
    20. Kyle, Albert S. & Ou-Yang, Hui & Xiong, Wei, 2006. "Prospect theory and liquidation decisions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 273-288, July.
    21. Lei Feng & Mark S. Seasholes, 2005. "Do Investor Sophistication and Trading Experience Eliminate Behavioral Biases in Financial Markets?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 9(3), pages 305-351.
    22. Sebastian Ebert & Philipp Strack, 2015. "Until the Bitter End: On Prospect Theory in a Dynamic Context," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1618-1633, April.
    23. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    24. Weber, Martin & Camerer, Colin F., 1998. "The disposition effect in securities trading: an experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 167-184, January.
    25. Kaminski, Kathryn M. & Lo, Andrew W., 2014. "When do stop-loss rules stop losses?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 234-254.
    26. Camerer, Colin F & Ho, Teck-Hua, 1994. "Violations of the Betweenness Axiom and Nonlinearity in Probability," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 167-196, March.
    27. Barberis, Nicholas & Xiong, Wei, 2012. "Realization utility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 251-271.
    28. Nicholas Barberis & Wei Xiong, 2009. "What Drives the Disposition Effect? An Analysis of a Long‐Standing Preference‐Based Explanation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 751-784, April.
    29. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
    30. Drazen Prelec, 1998. "The Probability Weighting Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(3), pages 497-528, May.
    31. Li, Yan & Yang, Liyan, 2013. "Prospect theory, the disposition effect, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 715-739.
    32. Jacopo Magnani, 2015. "Testing for the Disposition Effect on Optimal Stopping Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 371-375, May.
    33. Juanjuan Meng & Xi Weng, 2018. "Can Prospect Theory Explain the Disposition Effect? A New Perspective on Reference Points," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(7), pages 3331-3351, July.
    34. Jonathan E. Ingersoll & Lawrence J. Jin, 2013. "Realization Utility with Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(3), pages 723-767.
    35. Nicholas Barberis, 2012. "A Model of Casino Gambling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 35-51, January.
    36. Ebert, Sebastian, 2015. "On skewed risks in economic models and experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 85-97.
    37. T. Clifton Green & Byoung-Hyoun Hwang, 2012. "Initial Public Offerings as Lotteries: Skewness Preference and First-Day Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 432-444, February.
    38. Alok Kumar, 2009. "Who Gambles in the Stock Market?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1889-1933, August.
    39. Ravi Dhar & Ning Zhu, 2006. "Up Close and Personal: Investor Sophistication and the Disposition Effect," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(5), pages 726-740, May.
    40. Shefrin, Hersh & Statman, Meir, 1985. "The Disposition to Sell Winners Too Early and Ride Losers Too Long: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 777-790, July.
    41. Nicholas Barberis, 2013. "The Psychology of Tail Events: Progress and Challenges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 611-616, May.
    42. Vicky Henderson, 2012. "Prospect Theory, Liquidation, and the Disposition Effect," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 445-460, February.
    43. Spalt, Oliver G., 2013. "Probability Weighting and Employee Stock Options," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 1085-1118, August.
    44. Valery Polkovnichenko, 2005. "Household Portfolio Diversification: A Case for Rank-Dependent Preferences," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1467-1502.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vicky Henderson & Jonathan Muscat, 2020. "Partial liquidation under reference-dependent preferences," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 335-357, April.
    2. Kleinberg, Jon & Kleinberg, Robert & Oren, Sigal, 2022. "Optimal stopping with behaviorally biased agents: The role of loss aversion and changing reference points," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 282-299.
    3. Karolis Liaudinskas, 2019. "Human vs. Machine: Disposition Effect Among Algorithmic and Human Day-traders," Working Papers 1133, Barcelona School of Economics.
    4. Alex S. L. Tse & Harry Zheng, 2019. "Speculative Trading, Prospect Theory and Transaction Costs," Papers 1911.10106, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    5. Yu, Yinyun & Li, Congdong & Fu, Yelin & Yang, Weiming, 2023. "A group decision-making method to measure national energy architecture performance: A case study of the International energy Agency," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 330(PA).
    6. Karolis Liaudinskas, 2022. "Human vs. Machine: Disposition Effect among Algorithmic and Human Day Traders," Working Paper 2022/6, Norges Bank.
    7. Ebert, Sebastian & Hilpert, Christian, 2019. "Skewness preference and the popularity of technical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).

    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. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    2. Li, Yan & Yang, Liyan, 2013. "Prospect theory, the disposition effect, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 715-739.
    3. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    4. Ebert, Sebastian & Hilpert, Christian, 2019. "Skewness preference and the popularity of technical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    5. Bernard, Sabine & Loos, Benjamin & Weber, Martin, 2021. "The disposition effect in boom and bust markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 305, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    6. Brettschneider, Julia & Burro, Giovanni & Henderson, Vicky, 2021. "Wide framing disposition effect: An empirical study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 330-347.
    7. Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt & Jonas Frey, 2020. "Optimal Stopping in a Dynamic Salience Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 8496, CESifo.
    8. Li An & Huijun Wang & Jian Wang & Jianfeng Yu, 2020. "Lottery-Related Anomalies: The Role of Reference-Dependent Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 473-501, January.
    9. Frydman, Cary & Rangel, Antonio, 2014. "Debiasing the disposition effect by reducing the saliency of information about a stock's purchase price," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 541-552.
    10. Vicky Henderson, 2012. "Prospect Theory, Liquidation, and the Disposition Effect," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 445-460, February.
    11. Arjun Chatrath & Rohan A. Christie‐David & Hong Miao & Sanjay Ramchander, 2019. "Losers and prospectors in the short‐term options market," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(6), pages 721-743, June.
    12. Maier, Johannes K. & Fischer, Dominik S., 2021. "Decomposing the Disposition Effect," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 288, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    13. Dierick, Nicolas & Heyman, Dries & Inghelbrecht, Koen & Stieperaere, Hannes, 2019. "Financial attention and the disposition effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 190-217.
    14. Johannes Maier & Dominik S. Fischer, 2021. "Decomposing the Disposition Effect," CESifo Working Paper Series 9334, CESifo.
    15. Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Lawrence J. Jin, 2014. "Realization Utility with Reference-Dependent Preferences," Papers 1408.2859, arXiv.org.
    16. Hermann, Daniel & Mußhoff, Oliver & Rau, Holger A., 2019. "The disposition effect when deciding on behalf of others," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    17. Barber, Brad M. & Odean, Terrance, 2013. "The Behavior of Individual Investors," 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 1533-1570, Elsevier.
    18. Sarmiento, Julio & Rendón, Jairo & Sandoval, Juan S. & Cayon, Edgardo, 2019. "The disposition effect and the relevance of the reference period: Evidence among sophisticated investors," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    19. Eom, Yunsung, 2018. "The opposite disposition effect: Evidence from the Korean stock index futures market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 261-265.
    20. Karolis Liaudinskas, 2022. "Human vs. Machine: Disposition Effect among Algorithmic and Human Day Traders," Working Paper 2022/6, Norges Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Prospect theory; Behavioral economics; Disposition effect; Investor trading behavior; Probability weighting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G19 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Other
    • G39 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Other

    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:eee:jetheo:v:178:y:2018:i:c:p:360-397. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    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.