IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_9334.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decomposing the Disposition Effect

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Maier
  • Dominik S. Fischer

Abstract

We theoretically show that there is a fundamental disconnect between the disposition effect, i.e., investors’ tendency to sell winning assets too early and losing assets too late, and its common empirical measure, namely a positive difference between the proportion of gains and losses realized. While its common measure cannot identify the disposition effect, it identifies the presence of some systematic bias. We further investigate the measure’s comparative statics regarding markets, investors’ information level, and their attention. Besides generating novel testable predictions, this analysis reveals that, in contrast to the measure’s sign, variations in its magnitude are informative for its cause.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Maier & Dominik S. Fischer, 2021. "Decomposing the Disposition Effect," CESifo Working Paper Series 9334, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9334
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9334.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Locke, Peter R. & Mann, Steven C., 2005. "Professional trader discipline and trade disposition," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 401-444, May.
    2. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2009. "Fight or Flight? Portfolio Rebalancing by Individual Investors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 301-348.
    3. Chip Heath & Steven Huddart & Mark Lang, 1999. "Psychological Factors and Stock Option Exercise," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 601-627.
    4. Brad M. Barber & Yi‐Tsung Lee & Yu‐Jane Liu & Terrance Odean, 2007. "Is the Aggregate Investor Reluctant to Realise Losses? Evidence from Taiwan," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 13(3), pages 423-447, June.
    5. Urs Fischbacher & Gerson Hoffmann & Simeon Schudy, 2017. "The Causal Effect of Stop-Loss and Take-Gain Orders on the Disposition Effect," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2110-2129.
    6. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2005. "Do Behavioral Biases Affect Prices?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34, February.
    7. 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.
    8. David Genesove & Christopher Mayer, 2001. "Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1233-1260.
    9. 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.
    10. Kaustia, Markku, 2010. "Prospect Theory and the Disposition Effect," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 791-812, June.
    11. Jacopo Magnani, 2015. "Testing for the Disposition Effect on Optimal Stopping Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 371-375, May.
    12. Juanjuan Meng & Xi Weng, 2018. "Can Prospect Theory Explain the Disposition Effect? A New Perspective on Reference Points," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(7), pages 3331-3351, July.
    13. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    14. Allen M. Poteshman & Vitaly Serbin, 2003. "Clearly Irrational Financial Market Behavior: Evidence from the Early Exercise of Exchange Traded Stock Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(1), pages 37-70, February.
    15. Constantinides, George M, 1983. "Capital Market Equilibrium with Personal Tax," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(3), pages 611-636, May.
    16. Philip Brown & Nick Chappel & Ray Da Silva Rosa & Terry Walter, 2006. "The Reach of the Disposition Effect: Large Sample Evidence Across Investor Classes," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 6(1‐2), pages 43-78, March.
    17. Andrea Frazzini, 2006. "The Disposition Effect and Underreaction to News," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 2017-2046, August.
    18. 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.
    19. Shefrin, Hersh & Statman, Meir, 1985. "The Disposition to Sell Winners Too Early and Ride Losers Too Long: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 777-790, July.
    20. Weber, Martin & Camerer, Colin F., 1998. "The disposition effect in securities trading: an experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 167-184, January.
    21. Dierick, Nicolas & Heyman, Dries & Inghelbrecht, Koen & Stieperaere, Hannes, 2019. "Financial attention and the disposition effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 190-217.
    22. Vicky Henderson, 2012. "Prospect Theory, Liquidation, and the Disposition Effect," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 445-460, February.
    23. Grinblatt, Mark & Han, Bing, 2005. "Prospect theory, mental accounting, and momentum," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 311-339, November.
    24. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:5:p:1775-1798 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Gherzi, Svetlana & Egan, Daniel & Stewart, Neil & Haisley, Emily & Ayton, Peter, 2014. "The meerkat effect: Personality and market returns affect investors’ portfolio monitoring behaviour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 512-526.
    26. 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.
    27. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2013. "Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 173-196, Winter.
    28. Niklas Karlsson & George Loewenstein & Duane Seppi, 2009. "The ostrich effect: Selective attention to information," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 95-115, April.
    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. Maier, Johannes K. & Fischer, Dominik S., 2021. "Decomposing the Disposition Effect," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 288, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    2. Karolis Liaudinskas, 2022. "Human vs. Machine: Disposition Effect among Algorithmic and Human Day Traders," Working Paper 2022/6, Norges Bank.
    3. Henderson, Vicky & Hobson, David & Tse, Alex S.L., 2018. "Probability weighting, stop-loss and the disposition effect," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 360-397.
    4. Sarmiento, Julio & Rendón, Jairo & Sandoval, Juan S. & Cayon, Edgardo, 2019. "The disposition effect and the relevance of the reference period: Evidence among sophisticated investors," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    5. 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.
    6. Marco Pleßner, 2017. "The disposition effect: a survey," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 67(1), pages 1-30, February.
    7. Dierick, Nicolas & Heyman, Dries & Inghelbrecht, Koen & Stieperaere, Hannes, 2019. "Financial attention and the disposition effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 190-217.
    8. Li, Yan & Yang, Liyan, 2013. "Prospect theory, the disposition effect, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 715-739.
    9. 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).
    10. Deaves, Richard & Kluger, Brian & Miele, Jennifer, 2018. "An exploratory experimental analysis of path-dependent investment behaviors," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 47-65.
    11. Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & David Hume & John Gathergood & George Loewenstein & Neil Stewart, 2023. "At the Top of the Mind: Peak Prices and the Disposition Effect," Discussion Papers 2023-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    12. Daniela Vesselinova Balkanska, 2018. "Disposition effect and analyst forecast dispersion," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 837-859, April.
    13. Gutiérrez-Nieto, Begoña & Ortiz, Cristina & Vicente, Luis, 2023. "A bibliometric analysis of the disposition effect: Origins and future research avenues," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    14. Bernard, Sabine & Loos, Benjamin & Weber, Martin, 2021. "The disposition effect in boom and bust markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 305, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    15. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    16. Eom, Yunsung, 2018. "The opposite disposition effect: Evidence from the Korean stock index futures market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 261-265.
    17. Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Lawrence J. Jin, 2014. "Realization Utility with Reference-Dependent Preferences," Papers 1408.2859, arXiv.org.
    18. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    19. De Winne, Rudy, 2021. "Measuring the disposition effect," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    20. Matteo Ploner, 2017. "Hold on to it? An experimental analysis of the disposition effect," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 12(2), pages 118-127, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    disposition effect; rational benchmark; investor behaviour; behavioural biases; market segments; financial attention; information level;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_9334. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.