DO INDIVIDUAL INVESTORS GAIN by trading on private information? Do they possess
skills in interpreting public information? While individual investors are
often portrayed in the behavioral finance literature as unsophisticated “noise”
traders who are subject to fads and psychological biases, these important questions
have added relevance in light of recent interest in theoretical models
where information flows from investors to managers who make choices that
influence the real economy.1
The potential information advantage of individuals is counterintuitive given
the vast resources institutions devote to gathering information. Nonetheless,
there are at least two reasons to explore the information content of the trades of
individual investors. First, even if each individual investor has very imprecise
information, when the information is aggregated through the trades of many