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Belief dispersion among household investors and stock trading volume

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Abstract

We study the effects of belief dispersion on stock trading volume. Unlike most of the existing work on the subject, our paper focuses on how household investors' disagreements on macroeconomic variables influence market-wide trading volume. We show that greater belief dispersion among household investors is associated with significantly higher trading volume, even after controlling for the disagreements among professional forecasters. Further, we find that the belief dispersion among household investors who are more likely to own stocks has more pronounced effects on trading volume, suggesting a causal relationship. Finally, we show that greater \"belief jumbling,\" or the dispersion of belief changes over a given period, is also related to more active trading during the same period.

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  • Dan Li & Geng Li, 2011. "Belief dispersion among household investors and stock trading volume," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-39, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2011-39
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    Cited by:

    1. Siganos, Antonios & Vagenas-Nanos, Evangelos & Verwijmeren, Patrick, 2017. "Divergence of sentiment and stock market trading," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 130-141.
    2. Michael Bailey & Ruiqing Cao & Theresa Kuchler & Johannes Stroebel, 2016. "Social Networks and Housing Markets," NBER Working Papers 22258, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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