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Optimal Stock Trading with Personal Taxes: Implications for Prices and the Abnormal January Returns

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Author Info
George M. Constantinides

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Abstract

The tax law confers upon the investor a timing option--to realize capital losses and defer capital gains. With the tax rate on long term capital gains and losses being about half the short term rate, the tax law provides a second timing option--to realize capital losses short term and realize capital gains long term, if at all. Our theory and simulation with actual stock prices over the 1962-1977 period establish that the second timing option is extremely valuable: Taxable investors should realize their long term capital gains in high variance stocks and repurchase the same or similar stock, in order to reestablish the short-term status and realize potential future losses short term.Tax trading does not explain the positive abnormal returns of small firms. In the presence of transactions costs, tax trading predicts that the volumeof tax-loss selling increases from January to December and ceases inthe first few days of January. The trading volume seasonal maps into a stockprice seasonal only if tax-loss sellers are assumed irrational or ignorant of the price seasonality.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 1176.

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Date of creation: Aug 1984
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Publication status: published as Constantinides, George M. "Optimal Stock Trading with Personal Taxes: Implications for Prices and the Abnormal January Returns." Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 13, No. 1, (1984), pp. 65-89.
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1176

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Constantinides, George M, 1983. "Capital Market Equilibrium with Personal Tax," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(3), pages 611-36, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Mustafa N. Gultekin & Bulent N. Gultekin, . "Stock Market Seasonality and End of the Tax Year Effect," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 10-82, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
  3. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-87, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Cox, John C. & Ross, Stephen A. & Rubinstein, Mark, 1979. "Option pricing: A simplified approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 229-263, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Stoll, Hans R. & Whaley, Robert E., 1983. "Transaction costs and the small firm effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 57-79, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Constantinides, George M & Scholes, Myron S, 1980. " Optimal Liquidation of Assets in the Presence of Personal Taxes: Implications for Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(2), pages 439-49, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Reinganum, Marc R., 1981. "Misspecification of capital asset pricing : Empirical anomalies based on earnings' yields and market values," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 19-46, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Sidney B. Wachtel, 1942. "Certain Observations on Seasonal Movements in Stock Prices," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15, pages 184. [Downloadable!]
  9. Robert C. Merton, 1973. "Theory of Rational Option Pricing," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 4(1), pages 141-183, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Brown, Philip & Kleidon, Allan W. & Marsh, Terry A., 1983. "New evidence on the nature of size-related anomalies in stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 33-56, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Banz, Rolf W., 1981. "The relationship between return and market value of common stocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 3-18, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Keim, Donald B., 1983. "Size-related anomalies and stock return seasonality : Further empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 13-32, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Chen, Nai-fu, 1983. " Some Empirical Tests of the Theory of Arbitrage Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(5), pages 1393-1414, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-54, May-June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Rozeff, Michael S. & Kinney, William Jr., 1976. "Capital market seasonality: The case of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 379-402, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Branch, Ben, 1977. "A Tax Loss Trading Rule," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(2), pages 198-207, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Eduardo Walker, 2006. "Optimal Portfolios In Defined Contribution Pension Systems," Abante, Escuela de Administracion. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 9(2), pages 99-129. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ramon P. DeGennaro, 2005. "Market imperfections," Working Paper 2005-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
  3. Zoran Ivković & James Poterba & Scott Weisbenner, 2005. "Tax-Motivated Trading by Individual Investors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1605-1630, December. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Daniel J. Kovenock & Michael Rothschild, 1985. "Notes on the Effect of Capital Gains Taxation on Non-Austrian Assets," NBER Working Papers 1568, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Paul J. Bolster & Lawrence B. Lindsey & Andrew W. Mitrusi, 1990. "Tax Induced Trading: The Effect of the 1986 Tax Reform Act on Stock Market Activity," NBER Working Papers 2659, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Mao-Wei Hung & Hsiao-Yuan Yu, 2006. "A heterogeneous model of disposition effect," Applied Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 38(18), pages 2147-2157, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. James Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte Madrain & Andrew Metrick, 2007. "Reinforcement Learning in Investment Behavior," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000001737, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  8. Ferhan Salman, 2005. "Information, Capital Gains Taxes & New York Stock Exchange," Working Papers 0513, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. [Downloadable!]
  9. Michael Haliassos & Andrew B. Lyon, 1993. "Progressivity of Capital Gains Taxation with Optimal Portfolio Selection," NBER Working Papers 4253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Woodrow T. Johnson & James M. Poterba, 2008. "Taxes and Mutual Fund Inflows Around Distribution Dates," NBER Working Papers 13884, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Paul Harrison & Harold H. Zhang, . "Cyclical Variation in the Risk and Return Relation," Computing in Economics and Finance 1997 175, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
  12. Magnus Dahlquist, Peter Sellin, 1996. "Stochastic dominance, tax-loss selling and seasonalities in Sweden," European Journal of Finance, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-19, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. James M. Poterba, 2001. "Taxation and Portfolio Structure: Issues and Implications," NBER Working Papers 8223, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Zhonglan Dai & Edward Maydew & Douglas A. Shackelford & Harold H. Zhang, 2006. "Capital Gains Taxes and Asset Prices: Capitalization or Lock-In?," NBER Working Papers 12342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Joel M. Dickson & John B. Shoven, 1994. "A Stock Index Mutual Fund Without Net Capital Gains Realizations," NBER Working Papers 4717, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Eduardo Engel & Alexander Galetovic, 1998. "¿Qué hacer con los impuestos que pagan las ganancias de capital en Chile?," Documentos de Trabajo 46, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile. [Downloadable!]
  17. James M. Poterba, 1988. "How Burdensome are Capital Gains Taxes?," NBER Working Papers 1871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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