IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/safewp/297.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ambiguity and investor behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Kostopoulos, Dimitrios
  • Meyer, Steffen
  • Uhr, Charline

Abstract

We relate time-varying aggregate ambiguity (V-VSTOXX) to individual investor trading. We use the trading records of more than 100,000 individual investors from a large German online brokerage from March 2010 to December 2015. We find that an increase in ambiguity is associated with increased investor activity. It also leads to a reduction in risk-taking which does not reverse over the following days. When ambiguity is high, the effect of sentiment looms larger. Survey evidence reveals that ambiguity averse investors are more prone to ambiguity shocks. Our results are robust to alternative survey-, newspaper- or market-based ambiguity measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Kostopoulos, Dimitrios & Meyer, Steffen & Uhr, Charline, 2020. "Ambiguity and investor behavior," SAFE Working Paper Series 297, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:safewp:297
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3340851
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/227742/1/1743281978.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2139/ssrn.3340851?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keim, Donald B & Stambaugh, Robert F, 1984. "A Further Investigation of the Weekend Effect in Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 819-835, July.
    2. Lisa A. Kramer & Mark J. Kamstra & Maurice D. Levi, 2000. "Losing Sleep at the Market: The Daylight Saving Anomaly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1005-1011, September.
    3. Daniel Dorn & Gur Huberman, 2005. "Talk and Action: What Individual Investors Say and What They Do," Review of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 437-481, December.
    4. Campbell, John Y. & Hentschel, Ludger, 1992. "No news is good news *1: An asymmetric model of changing volatility in stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 281-318, June.
    5. Terrance Odean., 1996. "Volume, Volatility, Price and Profit When All Trader Are Above Average," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-266, University of California at Berkeley.
    6. Tim Bollerslev & George Tauchen & Hao Zhou, 2009. "Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(11), pages 4463-4492, November.
    7. Antonio Mele & Francesco Sangiorgi, 2015. "Uncertainty, Information Acquisition, and Price Swings in Asset Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(4), pages 1533-1567.
    8. H. Henry Cao & Tan Wang & Harold H. Zhang, 2005. "Model Uncertainty, Limited Market Participation, and Asset Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1219-1251.
    9. Larry G. Epstein & Shaolin Ji, 2013. "Ambiguous Volatility and Asset Pricing in Continuous Time," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(7), pages 1740-1786.
    10. 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.
    11. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2007. "Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 129-152, Spring.
    12. Robert F. Nau, 2006. "Uncertainty Aversion with Second-Order Utilities and Probabilities," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 136-145, January.
    13. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2001. "What Makes Investors Trade?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 589-616, April.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:6:p:1839-1885 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    16. Larry G. Epstein & Martin Schneider, 2010. "Ambiguity and Asset Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 315-346, December.
    17. Bali, Turan G. & Zhou, Hao, 2016. "Risk, Uncertainty, and Expected Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(3), pages 707-735, June.
    18. Rogalski, Richard J, 1984. "New Findings Regarding Day-of-the-Week Returns over Trading and Non-trading Periods: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(5), pages 1603-1614, December.
    19. Segal, Uzi, 1987. "The Ellsberg Paradox and Risk Aversion: An Anticipated Utility Approach," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(1), pages 175-202, February.
    20. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    21. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2000. "What Makes Investors Trade?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm146, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Nov 2001.
    22. Mark J. Kamstra & Lisa A. Kramer & Maurice D. Levi, 2003. "Winter Blues: A SAD Stock Market Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 324-343, March.
    23. Lakonishok, Josef & Maberly, Edwin, 1990. "The Weekend Effect: Trading Patterns of Individual and Institutional Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 231-243, March.
    24. Anderson, Evan W. & Ghysels, Eric & Juergens, Jennifer L., 2009. "The impact of risk and uncertainty on expected returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 233-263, November.
    25. Peter Klibanoff & Massimo Marinacci & Sujoy Mukerji, 2005. "A Smooth Model of Decision Making under Ambiguity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1849-1892, November.
    26. Wright, William F. & Bower, Gordon H., 1992. "Mood effects on subjective probability assessment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 276-291, July.
    27. Brenner, Menachem & Izhakian, Yehuda, 2018. "Asset pricing and ambiguity: Empirical evidence⁎," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 503-531.
    28. Peijnenburg, Kim, 2018. "Life-Cycle Asset Allocation with Ambiguity Aversion and Learning," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(5), pages 1963-1994, October.
    29. Milo Bianchi & Jean-Marc Tallon, 2014. "Ambiguity Preferences and Portfolio Choices: Evidence from the Field," Post-Print halshs-01109655, HAL.
    30. Kaustia, Markku & Rantapuska, Elias, 2016. "Does mood affect trading behavior?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 1-26.
    31. Simon Gervais & Ron Kaniel & Dan H. Mingelgrin, 2001. "The High‐Volume Return Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 877-919, June.
    32. Kostopoulos, Dimitrios & Meyer, Steffen & Uhr, Charline, 2020. "Google search volume and individual investor trading," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    33. Milo Bianchi & Jean-Marc Tallon, 2014. "Ambiguity Preferences and Portfolio Choices: Evidence from the Field," Post-Print halshs-01109655, HAL.
    34. Reinganum, Marc R., 1983. "The anomalous stock market behavior of small firms in January : Empirical tests for tax-loss selling effects," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 89-104, June.
    35. Josef Lakonishok, Seymour Smidt, 1988. "Are Seasonal Anomalies Real? A Ninety-Year Perspective," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(4), pages 403-425.
    36. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    37. Jochen M. Schmittmann & Jenny Pirschel & Steffen Meyer & Andreas Hackethal, 2015. "The Impact of Weather on German Retail Investors," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1143-1183.
    38. David Easley & Maureen O'Hara, 2009. "Ambiguity and Nonparticipation: The Role of Regulation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(5), pages 1817-1843, May.
    39. Diego García, 2013. "Sentiment during Recessions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 1267-1300, June.
    40. Daniel Andrei & Michael Hasler, 2015. "Investor Attention and Stock Market Volatility," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(1), pages 33-72.
    41. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2000. "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 773-806, April.
    42. Hong, Harrison & Yu, Jialin, 2009. "Gone fishin': Seasonality in trading activity and asset prices," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 672-702, November.
    43. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    44. French, Kenneth R., 1980. "Stock returns and the weekend effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 55-69, March.
    45. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2008. "All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 785-818, April.
    46. Alexander David & Pietro Veronesi, 2013. "What Ties Return Volatilities to Price Valuations and Fundamentals?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(4), pages 682-746.
    47. 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.
    48. Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen & Almut E. D. Veraart, 2012. "Stochastic Volatility of Volatility and Variance Risk Premia," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 1-46, December.
    49. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    50. Dimmock, Stephen G. & Kouwenberg, Roy & Mitchell, Olivia S. & Peijnenburg, Kim, 2016. "Ambiguity aversion and household portfolio choice puzzles: Empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 559-577.
    51. Ulrich, Maxim, 2013. "Inflation ambiguity and the term structure of U.S. Government bonds," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 295-309.
    52. Dow, James & Werlang, Sergio Ribeiro da Costa, 1992. "Uncertainty Aversion, Risk Aversion, and the Optimal Choice of Portfolio," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(1), pages 197-204, January.
    53. Kent D. Daniel & David Hirshleifer & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2001. "Overconfidence, Arbitrage, and Equilibrium Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 921-965, June.
    54. Ariel, Robert A., 1987. "A monthly effect in stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 161-174, March.
    55. Kostopoulos, Dimitrios & Meyer, Steffen, 2018. "Disentangling investor sentiment: Mood and household attitudes towards the economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 28-78.
    56. Itamar Drechsler, 2013. "Uncertainty, Time-Varying Fear, and Asset Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(5), pages 1843-1889, October.
    57. Gibbons, Michael R & Hess, Patrick, 1981. "Day of the Week Effects and Asset Returns," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 579-596, October.
    58. Terrance Odean, 1999. "Do Investors Trade Too Much?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1279-1298, December.
    59. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:6:p:1887-1934 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Wenhui & Ockenfels, Peter & Wilde, Christian, 2021. "The effect of ambiguity on price formation and trading behavior in financial markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 326, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

    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. Kostopoulos, Dimitrios & Meyer, Steffen & Uhr, Charline, 2022. "Ambiguity about volatility and investor behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 277-296.
    2. Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel, 2017. "Fresh Air Eases Work – The Effect of Air Quality on Individual Investor Activity," NBER Working Papers 24048, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jochen M. Schmittmann & Jenny Pirschel & Steffen Meyer & Andreas Hackethal, 2015. "The Impact of Weather on German Retail Investors," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1143-1183.
    4. Kostopoulos, Dimitrios & Meyer, Steffen, 2018. "Disentangling investor sentiment: Mood and household attitudes towards the economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 28-78.
    5. Meyer, Steffen & Uhr, Charline, 2024. "Ambiguity and private investors’ behavior after forced fund liquidations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    6. Li, Wenhui & Ockenfels, Peter & Wilde, Christian, 2021. "The effect of ambiguity on price formation and trading behavior in financial markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 326, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    7. Kaustia, Markku & Rantapuska, Elias, 2016. "Does mood affect trading behavior?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 1-26.
    8. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, June.
    9. Antoniou, Constantinos & Harris, Richard D.F. & Zhang, Ruogu, 2015. "Ambiguity aversion and stock market participation: An empirical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 57-70.
    10. Sullivan, Ryan & Timmermann, Allan & White, Halbert, 2001. "Dangers of data mining: The case of calendar effects in stock returns," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 249-286, November.
    11. Agarwal, Vikas & Arisoy, Y. Eser & Naik, Narayan Y., 2017. "Volatility of aggregate volatility and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 491-510.
    12. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Tang, Yi, 2017. "Is economic uncertainty priced in the cross-section of stock returns?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(3), pages 471-489.
    13. Cosmin L. Ilut & Martin Schneider, 2022. "Modeling Uncertainty as Ambiguity: a Review," NBER Working Papers 29915, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2010. "Choix de portefeuille: comparaison des différentes stratégies [Portfolio selection: comparison of different strategies]," MPRA Paper 82946, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Dec 2010.
    15. Qiang Chen & Yu Han & Ying Huang, 2024. "Market‐wide overconfidence and stock returns," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(1), pages 3-26, January.
    16. Compton, William S. & Kunkel, Robert A., 1998. "A Tax-Free Exploitation of the Turn-of-the-Month Effect: C.R.E.F," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 11-23.
    17. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," 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 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    18. Brenner, Menachem & Izhakian, Yehuda, 2018. "Asset pricing and ambiguity: Empirical evidence⁎," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 503-531.
    19. Kim, Jae H. & Shamsuddin, Abul, 2023. "Stock market anomalies: An extreme bounds analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    20. Kaustia, Markku & Rantapuska, Elias, 2013. "Does mood affect trading behavior?," SAFE Working Paper Series 4, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ambiguity; uncertainty; individual investor; risk-taking; trading behavior;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General

    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:zbw:safewp:297. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csafede.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.