IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eurjfi/v25y2019i15p1351-1376.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Individual investors’ information use, subjective expectations, and portfolio risk and return

Author

Listed:
  • Oscar Stålnacke

Abstract

What information do individual investors use when making their financial decisions and how is it related to their stock market expectations, their confidence in these expectations, and the risk and return of their stock portfolios? I study these questions by combining survey data on the information usage among individual investors in Sweden with detailed registry data on their stock portfolios. I find that investors use filtered financial information (e.g. information packaged by a professional intermediary) more frequently than they use unfiltered financial information (e.g. information from annual reports and financial statements). Investors who frequently use filtered financial information are, however, more confident in their stock market expectations and take larger risks in their stock portfolios. Investors that instead use unfiltered financial information take lower portfolio risks and obtain higher portfolio returns. The findings in this paper thus suggest that investors can improve their financial decisions by using more unfiltered financial information rather than filtered financial information when they make their financial decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Oscar Stålnacke, 2019. "Individual investors’ information use, subjective expectations, and portfolio risk and return," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(15), pages 1351-1376, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:eurjfi:v:25:y:2019:i:15:p:1351-1376
    DOI: 10.1080/1351847X.2019.1592769
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1351847X.2019.1592769
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1351847X.2019.1592769?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    2. 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.
    3. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
    4. Sebastien Betermier & Laurent E. Calvet & Paolo Sodini, 2017. "Who Are the Value and Growth Investors?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 5-46, February.
    5. Markus Glaser & Martin Weber, 2007. "Overconfidence and trading volume," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, Springer;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 32(1), pages 1-36, June.
    6. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2009. "Measuring the Financial Sophistication of Households," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 393-398, May.
    7. John Conlisk, 1996. "Why Bounded Rationality?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 669-700, June.
    8. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2009. "Sensation Seeking, Overconfidence, and Trading Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 549-578, April.
    9. Grinblatt, Mark & Keloharju, Matti & Linnainmaa, Juhani T., 2012. "IQ, trading behavior, and performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 339-362.
    10. 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.
    11. Fabian Gouret & Guillaume Hollard, 2011. "When Kahneman meets Manski: Using dual systems of reasoning to interpret subjective expectations of equity returns," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 371-392, April.
    12. Breusch, T S & Pagan, A R, 1979. "A Simple Test for Heteroscedasticity and Random Coefficient Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1287-1294, September.
    13. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    14. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2001. "What Makes Investors Trade?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 589-616, April.
    15. 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.
    16. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    17. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9805 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Arvid O. I. Hoffmann & Thomas Post & Joost M. E. Pennings, 2015. "How Investor Perceptions Drive Actual Trading and Risk-Taking Behavior," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 94-103, January.
    19. Anders Anderson, 2013. "Trading and Under-Diversification," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(5), pages 1699-1741.
    20. 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.
    21. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju & Juhani Linnainmaa, 2011. "IQ and Stock Market Participation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 2121-2164, December.
    22. Dominitz, Jeff, 2001. "Estimation of income expectations models using expectations and realization data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 165-195, June.
    23. 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.
    24. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2000. "What Makes Investors Trade?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm146, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Nov 2001.
    25. Hoffmann, Arvid O.I. & Post, Thomas, 2016. "How does investor confidence lead to trading? Linking investor return experiences, confidence, and investment beliefs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 65-78.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Talpsepp, Tõnn & Liivamägi, Kristjan & Vaarmets, Tarvo, 2020. "Academic abilities, education and performance in the stock market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    4. Bodnaruk, Andriy & Simonov, Andrei, 2015. "Do financial experts make better investment decisions?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 514-536.
    5. Cary Frydman & Nicholas Barberis & Colin Camerer & Peter Bossaerts & Antonio Rangel, 2014. "Using Neural Data to Test a Theory of Investor Behavior: An Application to Realization Utility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 907-946, April.
    6. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    7. Oscar A. Stolper & Andreas Walter, 2017. "Financial literacy, financial advice, and financial behavior," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(5), pages 581-643, July.
    8. da Silva, Paulo Pereira & Mendes, Victor, 2021. "Exchange-traded certificates, education and the disposition effect," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    9. Korniotis, George & Bonaparte, Yosef & Kumar, Alok, 2020. "Income Risk and Stock Market Entry/Exit Decisions," CEPR Discussion Papers 15370, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Muñoz, Fernando & Vicente, Ruth, 2018. "Hindsight effect: What are the actual cash flow timing skills of mutual fund investors?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 181-193.
    11. Gregor Dorfleitner & Lars Hornuf & Martina Weber, 2023. "Paralyzed by shock: the portfolio formation behavior of peer-to-business lending investors," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 1037-1073, April.
    12. Tekçe, Bülent & Yılmaz, Neslihan & Bildik, Recep, 2016. "What factors affect behavioral biases? Evidence from Turkish individual stock investors," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 515-526.
    13. Kahya, Evrim Hilal & Ekinci, Cumhur, 2022. "Disposition bias among Borsa Istanbul investors: What do we know about type, size and trading frequency?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    14. Weber, Martin & Mueller-Dethard, Jan, 2020. "The Portfolio Composition Effect," CEPR Discussion Papers 15012, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Oliver Gloede & Lukas Menkhoff, 2014. "Financial Professionals' Overconfidence: Is It Experience, Function, or Attitude?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(2), pages 236-269, March.
    16. Jaya M. Prosad & Sujata Kapoor & Jhumur Sengupta & Saurav Roychoudhary, 2017. "Overconfidence and Disposition Effect in Indian Equity Market: An Empirical Evidence," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 19(5), pages 1303-1321, October.
    17. Lukas Menkhoff & Maik Schmeling & Ulrich Schmidt, 2010. "Are All Professional Investors Sophisticated?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(4), pages 418-440, November.
    18. Gregor Dorfleitner & Lars Hornuf & Martina Weber, 2018. "Paralyzed by Shock: The Portfolio Formation Behavior of Peer-to-Business Lending Investors," CESifo Working Paper Series 7092, CESifo.
    19. Justin Birru & Fernando Chague & Rodrigo De-Losso & Bruno Giovannetti, 2024. "Attention and Biases: Evidence from Tax-Inattentive Investors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(10), pages 7101-7119, October.
    20. Hincapié-Salazar, Juliana & Agudelo, Diego A., 2020. "Is the disposition effect in bonds as strong as in stocks? Evidence from an emerging market," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).

    More about this item

    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:taf:eurjfi:v:25:y:2019:i:15:p:1351-1376. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJF20 .

    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.