IngentaConnect Chapter 7. Picking Stocks to Beat the Market

Author: Shefrin, Hersh

Source: Beyond Greed and Fear, October 2002 , pp. 69-91(23)

Publisher: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs

Abstract:

The third theme of behavioral finance is inefficient markets. In recent years scholars have produced considerable evidence that heuristic-driven bias and frame dependence cause markets to be inefficient. Scholars use the term “anomalies” to describe specific market inefficiencies. For this reason, Eugene Fama characterizes behavioral finance as “anomalies dredging.” This chapter discusses what behavioral finance implies about picking stocks and beating the market. Market efficiency is a direct challenge to active money managers, because it implies that trying to beat the market is a waste of time. Why? Because no security is mispriced in an efficient market, at least relative to information that is publicly available. Inside information may be another story. The chapter discusses whether the stock recommendations made by brokerage houses have beaten the market, and a series of effects discussed in the literature: the winner–loser effect, momentum, the size effect, the book-to-market effect, the effect of a change in analysts' recommendations.

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