The Retail Habitat

By: Toomas Laarits and Marco Sammon

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:51

Abstract

Retail investors trade hard-to-value stocks. Controlling for size, stocks with a high share of retail-initiated trades are composed of more intangible capital, have longer duration cash-flows and a higher likelihood of being mispriced. Consistent with retail-heavy stocks being harder to value, we document that such stocks are less sensitive to earnings news. As an additional consequence, the well-known earnings announcer risk premium is limited to low retail stocks only. Further, high-retail stocks are more sensitive to retail order flow and are especially expensive to trade around earnings announcements. Overall, the findings document a new dimension of investor heterogeneity and suggest the comparative advantage of retail in holding hard-to-value stocks.