We study the trading performance of actively-managed mutual funds from 16 domicile countries investing in 42 equity markets over the period 2001-2014. In the aggregate, funds achieve particularly poor returns in U.S. equity: after adjusting for style, the stocks they buy underperform those they sell by 0.61% per quarter. In non-U.S. equity, mutual fund trades achieve a gross quarterly return of only 0.19%, which appears small relative to trading costs in international markets. The relative size of the active mutual fund industry and the tendency of mutual funds to trade in herds contribute to their poor trading performance. Using the U.S. market as an important case with a longer time series and richer information, we find further supporting evidence.

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that traded most earned an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returned 17.9 percent. The average household earned an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilted its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turned over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.

We study the motivations for stock selling in a context where this was (at least from anex-post perspective) hazardous to investors' wealth. Making use of a unique feature of theCognitive Economics Study (CogEcon) that allows us to elicit domain-specific stock literacy andcorresponding confidence, we find that independent of their actual knowledge, investors weremore inclined to sell stocks during the financial crisis with high levels of confidence. This wasthe case even when trading was apparently not motivated by liquidity demands, risk-bearingcapacities or expectations about future asset market developments. Even more importantly,and in line with the literature that relates the discrepancy between financial knowledge andconfidence to making investment mistakes, we find that overconfidence was associated with ahigher propensity to realize stock losses - that is, selling assets whose value had deteriorated.Male as well as female investors in our sample were overconfident on average shortly beforethe outbreak of the crisis. Strikingly, however, only female investors traded to their detrimentas a result of their overconfidence. We do not find, in contrast, male investors to be at areal disadvantage of high levels of confidence not warranted by actual knowledge. We takea number of steps in response to endogeneity concerns including an alternative identificationmethod recently introduced by Lewbel (2012) that exploits information from the heteroscedasticstructure of the data. Further research is needed to understand the long-term consequences ofour findings concerning stock-market participation and finally wealth levels of females, who arealready at a high risk of hitting poverty at old-age.

This is the first book of its kind to address the topic of money management for individual traders and to present a comprehensive, detailed plan for implementation. It explains how to create a management program that addresses the emotional aspects of trading, presents an offensive and defensive portfolio allocation strategy, defines risk and shows the reader how to identify risk tolerance. It offers hands-on advice on selecting screen trades using fundamental and technical analysis and shows how to work with an "anatomy of trade."

Revolutionary techniques that traders can implement to improve profits and avoid losses No trader, professional or individual, can afford not to have a solid risk management program integrated into his or her trading system. But finding a precise mathematical model to replace subjective decision-making processes is a challenge. Traditionally, risk management has focused solely on loss avoidance, but in Trading Risk, hedge fund risk manager Kenneth Grant presents some-thing completely new—how to manage a portfolio to minimize risk and increase profits by putting more capital at risk. Trading Risk details a risk management program that can help both money managers and individual traders evaluate which elements in a portfolio are working efficiently and which aren’t. By illustrating an extremely simple set of statistical and arithmetic tools this book can help readers enhance their performance in many financial markets. Kenneth L.Grant is Cheyne’s Global Risk Manager, and is the Managing Member for Cheyne Capital, LLC, the firm’s U.S. arm. Mr. Grant is a pioneer in the field of hedge fund risk management and capital allocation. Before joining Cheyne, he created risk control programs at two of the world’s leading hedge funds, Tudor Investments and SAC Capital, where he was eventually promoted to the title of Chief Investment Strategist. Mr. Grant holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, an MA in Economics from Columbia University, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

You can learn trading penny stocks from the masses and become part of the 90% of traders who lose money in the stock market, or you can learn from the Best. The Complete Penny Stock Course is based on Timothy Sykes’, various training programs. His strategies have helped individuals like Tim Grittani, Michael Goode and Stephen Dux become millionaires within a couple of years. This course aims to teach you how to become a consistently profitable trader, by taking Tim’s profit-making strategies with penny stocks and presenting them in a well-structured learning format. You’ll start by getting acquainted with the concepts of market and trading psychology. Then you’ll get into the basics of day trading, how to manage your risk and the tools that will help you become profitable. Along the way, you’ll learn strategies and techniques to become consistent in your gains and develop your own trading techniques. What’s inside: - Managing expectations and understanding the market, - Understanding the psychology of trading and how it affects you, - Learning the basics of day trading, - Learning the mechanics of trading penny stocks, - Risk management and how to take safe positions, - How to trade through advanced techniques - Developing your own profitable trading strategy - Real world examples and case studies No prior trading experience is required.