 Breadth of Ownership and Stock ReturnsJoseph Chen, Harrison Hong and Jeremy Stein No 8151, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc Abstract: We develop a model of stock prices in which there are both differences of opinion among investors as well as short-sales constraints. The key insight that emerges is that breadth of ownership is a valuation indicator. When breadth is low i.e., when few investors have long positions in the stock this signals that the short-sales constraint is binding tightly, implying that prices are high relative to fundamentals and that expected returns are therefore low. Thus reductions (increases) in breadth should forecast lower (higher) returns. Using quarterly data on mutual fund holdings over the period 1979-1998, we find evidence supportive of this prediction: stocks whose change in breadth in the prior quarter places them in the lowest decile of the sample underperform those in the top change-in-breadth decile by 6.38% in the first twelve months after portfolio formation. After adjusting for size, book-to-market and momentum, the corresponding figure is 4.95%. JEL-codes: G12 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published as Chen, Joseph, Harrison Hong and Jeremy C. Stein. "Breadth Of Ownership And Stock Returns," Journal of Financial Economics, 2002, v66(2-3,Nov-Dec), 171-205. Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8151 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.