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What Matters to Individual Investors? Evidence from the Horse’s Mouth

Author

Listed:
  • James J. Choi
  • Adriana Z. Robertson

Abstract

We survey a representative sample of U.S. individuals about how well leading academic theories describe their financial beliefs and decisions. We find substantial support for many factors hypothesized to affect portfolio equity share, particularly background risk, investment horizon, rare disasters, transactional factors, and fixed costs of stock market participation. Individuals tend to believe that past mutual fund performance is a good signal of stock-picking skill, actively managed funds do not suffer from diseconomies of scale, value stocks are safer and do not have higher expected returns, and high-momentum stocks are riskier and do have higher expected returns.

Suggested Citation

  • James J. Choi & Adriana Z. Robertson, 2018. "What Matters to Individual Investors? Evidence from the Horse’s Mouth," NBER Working Papers 25019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25019
    Note: AP
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

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