RETAIL INVESTORS’ BIASED BELIEFS ABOUT STOCKS THAT THEY HOLD: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA’S SPLIT SHARE STRUCTURE REFORM

Yan Luo (), Xiaolin Qian (), Jinjuan Ren () and Yanjian Zhu
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Yan Luo: School of Management, Fudan University, No. 670 Guoshun Road, Shanghai 200433, P. R. China
Xiaolin Qian: Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Av. Padre Tomás Pereira, Taipa, Macau
Yanjian Zhu: Academy of Financial Research, College of Economics, Zhejiang University, 38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou, P. R. China

The Singapore Economic Review (SER), 2020, vol. 65, issue 06, 1579-1599

Abstract: We investigate the compensation plans during China’s split share structure reform, a unique event that affected the entire market and in which investors’ opinions over stock values can be measured. We find that anchoring effects and accruals biased investors’ valuations. Although previous studies have observed investor’s biased belief from their irrational trading behavior, our study provides direct evidence of their biases regarding stock values. In particular, the compensation ratio was lower for stocks with prices closer to the historical high and further from the 52-week high, for stocks with higher accruals and for stocks with higher misvaluations relative to industry peers. In addition, we find a strong herding effect for the compensation ratios of firms that had already completed the reform. These results are robust to control for the effects of risk sharing, differences in bargaining power, the price impact from the increased number of tradable shares and liquidity.

Keywords: Cognitive bias; misevaluation; behavioral finance; emerging markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1142/S0217590818500078

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