Accounting and Finance Seminar: Kim Peijnenburg, EDHEC Nice

Title: Extrapolators and Contrarians: Forecast Bias and Household Equity Trading*

Info about event

Time

Thursday 15 June 2023,  at 12:45 - 13:45

Location

Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Building 2630, Room 101

Organizer

Matthias Lassak

Presenter: Kim Peijnenburg, EDHEC Nice

Title: Extrapolators and Contrarians: Forecast Bias and Household Equity Trading

Abstract: We test whether forecast bias affects household equity trading.  We conduct an incentivized forecasting experiment to measure individual-level forecast bias.  Our experiment finds that, on average, subjects exhibit extrapolation bias – a tendency to excessively project recent experiences in the same direction.  There is substantial heterogeneity, however, and a large minority instead exhibits contrarian bias.  We combine the experimental results with administrative data on the subjects’ stock trading.  Forecast bias is strongly related to the past returns of stocks investors select to purchase. A one standard deviation increase in forecast bias is associated with purchasing stocks with 5.7 percentage points higher excess return over the prior year. Forecast bias is not associated with higher performance.  

Host: Steffen Meyer