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BOYS WILL BE BOYS: GENDER, OVERCONFIDENCE,

AND COMMON STOCK INVESTMENT*
BRAD M. BARBER AND TERRANCE ODEAN

Theoretical models predict that overconfident investors trade excessively. We

test this prediction by partitioning investors on gender. Psychological research
demonstrates that, in areas such as finance, men are more overconfident than
women. Thus, theory predicts that men will trade more excessively than women.
Using account data for over 35,000 households from a large discount brokerage,
we analyze the common stock investments of men and women from February 1991
through January 1997. We document that men trade 45 percent more than
women. Trading reduces men's net returns by 2.65 percentage points a year as
opposed to 1.72 percentage points for women.
It's not what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he does know
that ain't so.
Josh Billings, nineteenth century American humorist

It is difficult to reconcile the volume of trading observed in

equity markets with the trading needs of rational investors. Ra-
tional in~estors make periodic contributions and withdrawals
from their investment portfolios, rebalance their portfolios, and
trade to minimize their taxes. Those possessed of superior infor-
mation may trade speculatively, although rational speculative
traders will generally not choose to trade with each other. It is
unlikely that rational trading needs account for a turnover rate of
76 percent on the New York Stock Exchange in 1998. 1
We believe there is a simple and powerful explanation for
high levels of trading on financial markets: overconfidence. Hu-
man beings are overconfident about their abilities, their knowl-
edge, and their future prospects. Odean [1998] shows that over-
confident investors-who believe that the precision of their
knowledge about the value of a security is greater than it actually

* We are grateful to the discount brokerage firm that provided us with the
data for this study and grateful to Paul Thomas, David Moore, Paine Webber, and
the Gallup Organization for providing survey data. We appreciate the comments
of Diane Del Guercio, David Hirshleifer, Andrew Karolyi, Timothy Loughran,
Edward Opton Jr., Sylvester Schieber, Andrei Shleifer, Martha Starr-McCluer,
Richard Thaler, Luis Viceira, and participants at the University of Alberta,
Arizona State University, INSEAD, the London Business School, the University of
Michigan, the University of Vienna, the Institute on Psychology and Markets, the
Conference on Household Portfolio Decision-making and Asset Holdings at the
University of Pennsylvania, and the Western Finance Association Meetings. All
errors are our own. Terrance Odean can be reached at (530) 752-5332 or
[email protected]; Brad Barber can be reached at (530) 752-0512 or
bmbarber®ucdavis.edu.
1. NYSE Fact Book for the Year 1999.

© 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2001

261
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262 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

is-trade more than rational investors and that doing so lowers

their expected utilities. Greater overconfidence leads to greater
trading and to lower expected utility.
A direct test of whether overconfidence contributes to exces-
sive market trading is to separate investors into those more and
those less prone to overconfidence. One can then test whether
more overconfidence leads to more trading and to lower returns.
Such a test is the primary contribution of this paper.
Psychologists find that in areas such as finance men are more
overconfident than women. This difference in overconfidence
yields two predictions: men will trade more than women, and the
performance of men will be hurt more by excessive trading than
the performance of women. To test these hypotheses, we partition
a data set of position and trading records for over 35,000 house-
holds at a large discount brokerage firm into accounts opened by
men and accounts opened by women. Consistent with the predic-
tions of the overconfidence models, we find that the average
turnover rate of common stocks for men is nearly one and a half
times that for women. While both men and women reduce their
net returns through trading, men do so by 0.94 percentage points
more a year than do women.
The differences in turnover and return performance are even
more pronounced between single men and single women. Single
men trade 67 percent more than single women thereby reducing
their returns by 1.44 percentage points per year more than do
single women.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We
motivate our test of overconfidence in Section I. We discuss our
data and empirical methods in Section II. Our main results are
presented in Section III. We discuss competing explanations
for our results in Section N and make concluding remarks in
Section V.

I. A TEST OF OVERCONFIDENCE

I.A. Overconfidence and Trading on Financial Markets

Studies ofthe calibration of subjective probabilities find that
people tend to overestimate the precision of their knowledge
[Alpert and Raiffa 1982; Fischhoff, Slovic, and Lichtenstein
1977]; see Lichtenstein, Fischhoff, and Phillips [1982] for a re-
view of the calibration literature. Such overconfidence has been
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 263

observed in many professional fields. Clinical psychologists [Os-

kamp 1965], physicians and nurses [Christensen-Szalanski and
Bushyhead 1981; Baumann, Deber, and Thompson 1991], invest-
ment bankers [Stael von Holstein 1972], engineers [Kidd 1970],
entrepreneurs [Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg 1988], lawyers
[Wagenaar and Keren 1986], negotiators [Neale and Bazerman
1990], and managers [Russo and Schoemaker 1992] have all been
observed to exhibit overconfidence in their judgments. (For fur-
ther discussion see Lichtenstein, Fischhoff, and Phillips [1982]
and Yates [1990].)
Overconfidence is greatest for difficult tasks, for forecasts
with low predictability, and for undertakings lacking fast, clear
feedback [Fischhoff, Slovic, and Lichtenstein 1977; Lichtenstein,
Fischhoff, and Phillips 1982; Yates 1990; Griffin and Tversky
1992]. Selecting common stocks that will outperform the market
is a difficult task. Predictability is low; feedback is noisy. Thus,
stock selection is the type of task for which people are most
overconfident.
Odean [1998] develops models in which overconfident inves-
tors overestimate the precision of their knowledge about the
value of a financial security.2 They overestimate the probability
that their personal assessments of the security's value are more
accurate than the assessments of others. Thus, overconfident
investors believe more strongly in their own valuations, and
concern themselves less about the beliefs of others. This intensi-
fies differences of opinion. And differences of opinion cause trad-
ing [Varian 1989; Harris and Raviv 1993]. Rational investors only
trade and only purchase information when doing so increases
their expected utility (e.g., Grossman and Stiglitz [1980]). Over-
confident investors, on the other hand, lower their expected util-
ity by trading too much; they hold unrealistic beliefs about how
high their returns will be and how precisely these can be esti-
mated; and they expend too many resources (e.g., time and
money) on investment information [Odean 1998]. Overconfident

2. Other models of overconfident investors include De Long, Shleifer, Sum-

mers, and Waldmann [1991], Benos [1998], Kyle and Wang [1997], Daniel, Hirsh-
leifer, and Subramanyam [1998], Gervais and Odean [1998], and Caballe and
Sakovics [1998]. Kyle and Wang argue that when traders compete for duopoly
profits, overconfident traders may reap greater profits. However, this prediction is
based on several assumptions that do not apply to individuals trading common
stocks.
Odean [1998] points out that overconfidence may result from investors over-
estimating the precision of their private signals or, alternatively, overestimating
their abilities to correctly interpret public signals.
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264 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

investors also hold riskier portfolios than do rational investors

with the same degree of risk aversion [Odean 1998].
Barber and Odean [2000] and Odean [1999] test whether
investors decrease their expected utility by trading too much.
Using the same data analyzed in this paper, Barber and Odean
show that after accounting for trading costs, individual investors
underperform relevant benchmarks. Those who trade the most
realize, by far, the worst performance. This is what the models of
overconfident investors predict. With a different data set, Odean
[1999] finds that the securities individual investors buy subse-
quently underperform those they sell. When he controls for li-
quidity demands, tax-loss selling, rebalancing, and changes in
risk aversion, investors' timing of trades is even worse. This
result suggests that not only are investors too willing to act on too
little information, but they are too willing to act when they are
wrong.
These studies demonstrate that investors trade too much and
to their detriment. The findings are inconsistent with rationality
and not easily explained in the absence of overconfidence. Nev-
ertheless, overconfidence is neither directly observed nor manip-
ulated in these studies. A yet sharper test of the models that
incorporate overconfidence is to partition investors into those
more and those less prone to overconfidence. The models predict
that the more overconfident investors will trade more and realize
lower average utilities. To test these predictions, we partition our
data on gender.
LB. Gender and Overconfidence
While both men and women exhibit overconfidence, men are
generally more overconfident than women [Lundeberg, Fox, and
Puncochaf 1994] .3 Gender differences in overconfidence are
highly task dependent [Lundeberg, Fox, and Puncochaf 1994].
Deaux and Farris [1977] write "Overall, men claim more ability
than do women, but this difference emerges most strongly on ...
masculine task[s]." Several studies confirm that differences in
confidence are greatest for tasks perceived to be in the masculine
domain [Deaux and Emswiller 1974; Lenney 1977; Beyer and
Bowden 1997]. Men are inclined to feel more competent than

3. While Lichtenstein and Fishhoff [1981] do not find gender differences in

calibration of general knowledge, Lundeberg, Fox, and Puncochaf [1994] argue
that this is because gender differences in calibration are strongest for topics in the
masculine domain.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 265

women do in financial matters [Prince 1993]. Indeed, casual ob-

servation reveals that men are disproportionately represented in
the financial industry. We expect, therefore, that men will gen-
erally be more overconfident about their ability to make financial
decisions than women.
Additionally, Lenney [1977] reports that gender differences
in self-confidence depend on the lack of clear and unambiguous
feedback. When feedback is "unequivocal and immediately avail-
able, women do not make lower ability estimates than men.
However, when such feedback is absent or ambiguous, women
seem to have lower opinions of their abilities and often do under-
estimate relative to men." Feedback in the stock market is am-
biguous. All the more reason to expect men to be more confident
than women about their ability to make common stock
investments.
Gervais and Odean [1998] develop a model in which investor
overconfidence results from self-serving attribution bias. Inves-
tors in this model infer their own abilities from their successes
and failures. Due to their tendency to take too much credit for
their successes, they become overconfident. Deaux and Farris
[1977], Meehan and Overton [1986], and Beyer [1990] find that
the self-serving attribution bias is greater for men than for
women. And so men are likely to become more overconfident than
women.
The previous study most like our own is Lewellen, Lease, and
Schlarbaum's [1977] analysis of survey answers and brokerage
records (from 1964 through 1970) of 972 individual investors.
Lewellen, Lease, and Schlarbaum's report that men spend more
time and money on security analysis, rely less on their brokers,
make more transactions, believe that returns are more highly
predictable, and anticipate higher possible returns than do
women. In all these ways, men behave more like overconfident
investors than do women.
Additional evidence that men are more overconfident inves-
tors than women comes from surveys conducted by the Gallup
Organization for PaineWebber. Gallup conducted the survey fif-
teen times between June 1998 and January 2000. There were
approximately 1000 respondents per survey. In addition to other
questions, respondents were asked "What overall rate of return
do you expect to get on your portfolio in the NEXT twelve
months?" and "Thinking about the stock market more generally,
what overall rate of return do you think the stock market will
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266 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

provide investors during the coming twelve months?" On average,

both men and women expected their own portfolios to outperform
the market. However, men expected to outperform by a greater
margin (2.8 percent) than did women (2.1 percent). The difference
in the average anticipated outperformance of men and women is
statistically significant (t = 3.3).4
In summary, we have a natural experiment to (almost) di-
rectly test theoretical models of investor overconfidence. A ratio-
nal investor only trades if the expected gain exceeds the transac-
tions costs. An overconfident investor overestimates the precision
of his information and thereby the expected gains of trading. He
may even trade when the true expected net gain is negative. Since
men are more overconfident than women, this gives us two test-
able hypotheses:
HI: Men trade more than women.
H2: By trading more, men hurt their performance more than do
women.
It is these two hypotheses that are the focus of our inquiry.5

II. DATA AND METHODS

II.A. Household Account and Demographic Data

Our main results focus on the common stock investments of
37,664 households for which we are able to identify the gender of
the person who opened the household's first brokerage account.
This sample is compiled from two data sets.
Our primary data set is information from a large discount
brokerage firm on the investments of 78,000 households for the six
years ending in December 1996. For this period, we have end-of-
month position statements and trades that allow us to reasonably
estimate monthly returns from February 1991 through January

4. Some respondents answered that they expected market returns as high as

900. We suspect that these respondents were thinking of index point moves rather
than percentage returns. Therefore, we have dropped from our calculations re-
spondents who gave answers of more than 100 to this question. If, alternatively,
we Windsorize answers over 900 at 100 there is no significant change in our
results.
5. Overconfidence models also imply that more overconfident investors will
hold riskier portfolios. In Section III we present evidence that men hold riskier
common stock portfolios than women. However, gender differences in portfolio
risk may be due to differences in risk tolerance rather than (or in addition to)
differences in overconfidence.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 267

1997. The data set includes all accounts opened by the 78,000 house-
holds at this discount brokerage finn. Sampled households were
required to have an open account with the discount brokerage finn
during 1991. Roughly half of the accounts in our analysis were
opened prior to 1987, while half were opened between 1987 and
1991. On average, men opened their first account at this brokerage
4.7 years before the beginning of our sample period, while women
opened theirs 4.3 years before. During the sample period, men's
accounts held common stocks for 58 months on average and wom-
en's for 59 months. The median number of months men held com-
mon stocks is 70. For women it is 71.
In this research, we focus on the common stock investments
of households. We exclude investments in mutual funds (both
open- and closed-end), American depository receipts (ADRs), war-
rants, and options. Of the 78,000 sampled households, 66,465 had
positions in common stocks during at least one month; the re-
maining accounts either held cash or investments in other than
individual common stocks. The average household had approxi-
mately two accounts, and roughly 60 percent of the market value
in these accounts was held in common stocks. These households
made over 3 million trades in all securities during our sample
period; common stocks accounted for slightly more than 60 per-
cent of all trades. The average household held four stocks worth
$47,000 during our sample period, although each of these figures
is positively skewed. 6 The median household held 2.6 stocks
worth $16,000. In aggregate, these households held more than
$4.5 billion in common stocks in December 1996.
Our secondary data set is demographic infonnation compiled by
Infobase Inc. (as of June 8, 1997) and provided to us by the broker-
age house. These data identify the gender of the person who opened
a household's first account for 37,664 households, of which 29,659
(79 percent) had accounts opened by men and 8,005 (21 percent) had
accounts opened by women. In addition to gender, Infobase provides
data on marital status, the presence of children, age, and household
income. We present descriptive statistics in Table I, Panel A. These
data reveal that the women in our sample are less likely to be
married and to have children than men. The mean and median ages
of the men and women in our sample are roughly equal. The women
report slightly lower household income, although the difference is
not economically large.

6. Throughout the paper, portfolio values are reported in current dollars.

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TABLE I ~
O'l
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR DEMOGRAPHICS OF FEMALE AND MALE HOUSEHOLDS 00

All households Married households Single households

Difference Difference Difference

(women- (women- (women-
Variable Women Men men) Women Men men) Women Men men)
.()
Panel A: Infobase data
Number of households 8,005 29,659 NA 4,894 19,741 NA 2,306 6,326 NA
~
Percentage married 68.0 75.7 -7.7 ~
Percentage with children
Mean age
25.2
50.9
32.2
50.3
-7.0
0.6
33.6
49.9
40.4
51.1
-6.8
-1.2
10.6
53.0
10.5
48.2
0.1
4.8
8l
~
Median age 48.0 48.0 0.0 48.0 48.0 0.0 50.0 46.0 4.0
Mean income ($000) 73.0 75.6 -2.6 81.2 79.6 1.6 56.7 62.8 -6.1 C5
% with income >$125,000 11.2 11.7 -0.5 14.2 13.0 1.2 5.9 7.4 -1.5 §
Panel B: Self-reported data
Number of households 2,637 11,226 1,707 7,700 652 2,184 ~
Net worth ($000)
90th Percentile 500.0 500.0 0.0 500.0 500.0 0.0 350.0 450.0 -100.0
~
t>::I
75th Percentile 200.0 250.0 -50.0 250.0 250.0 0.0 175.0 200.0 -25.0 (J
100.0 100.0 0.0 100.0 100.0 0.0 100.0 100.0 0.0
~
Median
25th Percentile 60.0 74.5 -14.5 62.5 74.5 -12.0 40.0 62.0 -22.0
10th Percentile 27.0 37.0 -10.0 35.0 37.0 -2.0 20.0 35.0 -15.0 Q
EMity to net worth (%) E5
ean 13.3 13.2 0.1 12.9 12.9 0.0 14.4 14.3 0.1
Median 6.7 6.7 0.0 6.3 6.6 -0.3 7.9 7.4 0.5 &5
Investment experience (%)
None 5.4 3.4 2.0 4.7 3.4 1.3 7.4 3.0 4.4
Limited 46.8 34.1 12.7 44.9 34.2 10.7 52.6 33.3 19.3
Good 39.1 48.5 -9.4 40.8 48.5 -7.7 33.3 48.8 -15.5
Extensive 8.7 14.0 -5.3 9.6 13.9 -4.3 6.7 14.9 -8.2

The sample consists of households with conunon stock investment at a large discount brokerage firm for which we are able to identifY the gender of the person who opened the
household's first account. Data on marital status, children. age, and income are from Infobase Inc. as of June 1997. Self-reported data are information supplied to the discount
brokerage firm at the time the account is opened by the person on opening the account. Income is reported within eight ranges, where the top range is greater than $125,000. We
calculate means using the midpoint of each range and $125,000 for the top range. Equity to Net Worth (%) is the proportion of the market value of common stock investment at this
discount brokerage firm as of January 1991 to total self-reported net worth when the household opened ita first account at this brokerage. Those households with a proportion equity
to net worth greater than 100 percent are deleted when calculating means and medians. Number of observations for each variable is slightly less than the number of reported
households.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 269

In addition to the data from Infobase, we also have a limited

amount of self-reported data collected at the time each household
first opened an account at the brokerage (and not subsequently
updated), which we summarize in Table I, Panel B. Of particular
interest to us are two variables: net worth, and investment expe-
rience. For this limited sample (about one-third of our total sam-
ple), the distribution of net worth for women is slightly less than
that for men, although the difference is not economically large.
For this limited sample, we also calculate the ratio of the market
value of equity (as of the first month that the account appears in
our data set) to self-reported net worth (which is reported at the
time the account is opened). This provides a measure, albeit
crude, of the proportion of a household's net worth that is in-
vested in the common stocks that we analyze. (If this ratio is
greater than one, we delete the observation from our analysis.)
The mean household holds about 13 percent of its net worth in the
common stocks we analyze, and there is little difference in this
ratio between men and women.
The differences in self-reported experience by gender are
quite large. In general, women report having less investment
experience than men. For example, 47.8 percent of women report
having good or extensive investment experience, while 62.5 per-
cent of men report the same level of experience.
Married couples may influence each other's investment deci-
sions. In some cases the spouse making investment decisions may
not be the spouse who originally opened a brokerage account.
Thus, we anticipate that observable differences in the investment
activities of men and women will be greatest for single men and
single women. To investigate this possibility, we partition our
data on the basis of marital status. The descriptive statistics from
this partition are presented in the last six columns of Table I. For
married households, we observe very small differences in age,
income, the distribution of net worth, and the ratio of net worth
to equity. Married women in our sample are less likely to have
children than married men, and they report having less invest-
ment experience than men.
For single households, some differences in demographics be-
come larger. The average age of the single women in our sample is
five years older than that of the single men; the median is four years
older. The average income of single women is $6,100 less than that
of single men, and fewer report having incomes in excess of
$125,000. Similarly, the distribution of net worth for single women
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270 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

is lower than that of single men. Finally, single women report

having less investment experience than single men.
II.B. Return Calculations
To evaluate the investment performance of men and women,
we calculate the gross and net return performance of each house-
hold. The net return performance is calculated after a reasonable
accounting for the market impact, commissions, and bid-ask
spread of each trade.
For each trade, we estimate the bid-ask spread component of
transaction costs for purchases (spr db) or sales (spr d) as

Sprd, = (~f: -1), and Sprdb = -(~;: - 1).

P'i,and P'ib are the reported closing prices from the Center for
Research in Security Prices (CRSP) daily stock return files on the
day of a sale and purchase, respectively; P'!:is and P~b are the
actual sale and purchase price from our account database. Our
estimate of the bid-ask spread component of transaction costs
includes any market impact that might result from a trade. It also
includes an intraday return on the day of the trade. The commis-
sion component of transaction costs is calculated to be the dollar
value of the commission paid scaled by the total principal value of
the transaction, both of which are reported in our account data.
The average purchase costs an investor 0.31 percent, while
the average sale costs an investor 0.69 percent in bid-ask spread.
Our estimate of the bid-ask spread is very close to the trading cost
of 0.21 percent for purchases and 0.63 percent for sales paid by
open-end mutual funds from 1966 to 1993 [Carhart 1997].1 The
average purchase in excess of $1000 cost 1.58 percent in commis-
sions, while the average sale in excess of$1000 cost 1.45 percent. 8
We calculate trade-weighted (weighted by trade size) spreads
and commissions. These figures can be thought of as the total cost

7. Odean [1999] finds that individual investors are more likely to both buy
and sell particular stocks when the prices of those stocks are rising. This tendency
can partially explain the asymmetry in buy and sell spreads. Any intraday price
rises following transactions subtract from our estimate of the spread for buys and
add to our estimate of the spread for sells.
8. To provide more representative descriptive statistics on percentage com-
missions, we exclude trades less than $1000. The inclusion of these trades results
in a round-trip commission cost of 5 percent, on average (2.1 percent for purchases
and 3.1 percent for sales).
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 271

of conducting the $24 billion in common stock trades (approxi-

mately $12 billion each in purchases and sales). Trade-size
weighting has little effect on spread costs (0.27 percent for pur-
chases and 0.69 percent for sales) but substantially reduces the
commission costs (0.77 percent for purchases and 0.66 percent for
sales).
In sum, the average trade in excess of $1000 incurs a round-
trip transaction cost of about 1 percent for the bid-ask spread and
about 3 percent in commissions. In aggregate, round-trip trades
cost about 1 percent for the bid-ask spread and about 1.4 percent
in commissions.
We estimate the gross monthly return on each common stock
investment using the beginning-of-month position statements
from our household data and the CRSP monthly returns file. In so
doing, we make two simplifying assumptions. First, we assume
that all securities are bought or sold on the last day ofthe month.
Thus, we ignore the returns earned on stocks purchased from the
purchase date to the end of the month and include the returns
earned on stocks sold from the sale date to the end of the month.
Second, we ignore intramonth trading (e.g., a purchase on March
6 and a sale of the same security on March 20), although we do
include in our analysis short-term trades that yield a position at
the end of a calendar month. Barber and Odean [2000] provide a
careful analysis of both of these issues and document that these
simplifying assumptions yield trivial differences in our return
calculations.
Consider the common stock portfolio for a particular house-
hold. The gross monthly return on the household's portfolio (REf.'t)
is calculated as
Sh,

R1.~ = ~ pitRr;,
i=l

where Pit is the beginning-of-month market value for the holding

of stock i by household h in month t divided by the beginning-of-
month market value of all stocks held by household h, Rf; is the
gross monthly return for that stock, and S ht is the number of
stocks held by household h in month t.
For security i in month t, we calculate a monthly return net
of transaction costs (R'tlt) as
(1 + Ritet) = (1 + RrF) (1 - cit)/(l + Cr,t-l),
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272 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

where Crt is the cost of sales scaled by the sales price in month t
and C?,t-l is the cost of purchases scaled by the purchase price in
month t - 1. The cost of purchases and sales include the com-
missions and bid-ask spread components, which are estimated
individually for each trade as previously described. Thus, for a
security purchased in month t - 1 and sold in month t, both Crt
and C?'t-l are positive; for a security that was neither purchased
in month t - 1 nor sold in month t, both cft and C?,t-l are zero.
Because the timing and cost of purchases and sales vary across
households, the net return for security i in month t will vary
across households. The net monthly portfolio return for each
household is
Sh,

R net -" Rnet

ht - L.J P it it·
i=l

(If only a portion of the beginning-of-month position in stock i was

purchased or sold, the transaction cost is only applied to the
portion that was purchased or sold.)
We estimate the average gross and net monthly returns
earned by men as

RMgtr = -
1 -L Rgr and RMnet = -
1 -L Rnet
n ht, n ht,
mt h=l mt h=l

where nmt is the number of male households with common stock

investment in month t. There are analogous calculations for
women.
II. C. Turnover
We calculate the monthly portfolio turnover for each house-
hold as one-half the monthly sales turnover plus one-half the
monthly purchase turnover.9 In each month during our sample
period, we identify the common stocks held by each household at
the beginning of month t from their position statement. To cal-
culate monthly sales turnover, we match these positions to sales

9. Sell turnover for household h in month t is calculated as '2'.f!!\ Pit min (1,
Sit/Hit), where Sit is the number of shares in security i sold during the month, Pit
is the value of stock i held at the beginning of month t scaled by the total value of
stock holdings, and Hit is the number of shares of security i held at the beginning
of month t. Buy turnover is calculated as '2'.f!;'t Pi,t+l min (1, Bit/Hi,t+l), where Bit
is the number of shares of security i bought during the month.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 273

during month t. The monthly sales turnover is calculated as the

shares sold times the beginning-of-month price per share divided
by the total beginning-of-month market value of the household's
portfolio. To calculate monthly purchase turnover, we match
these positions to purchases during month t - 1. The monthly
purchase turnover is calculated as the shares purchased times
the beginning-of-month price per share divided by the total be-
ginning-of-month market value of the portfolio. 1o

Il.D. The Effect of Trading on Return Performance

We calculate an "own-benchmark" abnormal return for indi-
vidual investors that is similar in spirit to those proposed by
Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny [1992] and Grinblatt and Tit-
man [1993]. In this abnormal return calculation, the benchmark
for household h is the month t return of the beginning-of-year
portfolio held by household h,n denoted R%t. It represents the
return that the household would have earned ifit had merely held
its beginning-of-year portfolio for the entire year. The gross or net
own-benchmark abnormal return is the return earned by house-
hold h less the return of household h's beginning-of-year portfolio
(AR%~ = R%~ - R%t or ARh~t = Rh~t - R~t). If the household did
not trade during the year, the own-benchmark abnormal return
would be zero for all twelve months during the year.
In each month the abnormal returns across male households
are averaged yielding a 72-month time-series of mean monthly
own-benchmark abnormal returns. Statistical significance is cal-
culated using t-statistics based on this time-series: ARfl
[O"(ARf)/\I72] , where
__ 1 nmt

ARf = n 2:
mt t=l
(R%~ - R~t).

10. If more shares were sold than were held at the beginning of the month
(because, for example, an investor purchased additional shares after the begin-
ning of the month), we assume the entire beginning-of-month position in that
security was sold. Similarly, if more shares were purchased in the preceding
month than were held in the position statement, we assume that the entire
position was purchased in the preceding month. Thus, turnover, as we have
calculated it, cannot exceed 100 percent in a month.
11. When calculating this benchmark, we begin the year on February 1. We
do so because our first monthly position statements are from the month end of
January 1991. If the stocks held by a household at the beginning of the year are
missing CRSP returns data during the year, we assume that stock is invested in
the remainder of the household's portfolio.
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274 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

There is an analogous calculation of net abnormal returns for

men, gross abnormal returns for women, and net abnormal re-
turns for women. 12
The advantage of the own-benchmark abnormal return mea-
sure is that it does not adjust returns according to a particular
risk model. No model of risk is universally accepted; furthermore,
it may be inappropriate to adjust investors' returns for stock
characteristics that they do not associate with risk. The own-
benchmark measure allows each household to self-select the in-
vestment style and risk profile of its benchmark (i.e., the portfolio
it held at the beginning of the year), thus emphasizing the effect
trading has on performance.

II.E. Security Selection

Our theory says that men will underperform women because
men trade more and trading is costly. An alternative cause of
underperformance is inferior security selection. Two investors
with similar initial portfolios and similar turnover will differ in
performance if one consistently makes poor security selections.
To measure security selection ability, we compare the returns of
stocks bought with those of stocks sold.
In each month we construct a portfolio comprised of those
stocks purchased by men in the preceding twelve months. The
returns on this portfolio in month t are calculated as

where Tfr is the aggregate value of all purchases by men in

security i from month t - 12 through t - 1, Rit is the gross
monthly return of stock i in month t, and npt is the number of
different stocks purchased from month t - 12 through t - l.
(Alternatively, we weight by the number rather than the value of
trades.) Four portfolios are constructed: one for the purchases of
men (Rf m ), one for the purchases of women (Rf W ), one for the
sales of men (Rf m ), and one for the sales of women (Rf w ).

12. Alternatively, one can first calculate the monthly time-series average
own-benchmark return for each household and then test the significance of the
cross-sectional average of these. The t-statistics for the cross-sectional tests are
larger than those we report for the time-series tests.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 275

III. RESULTS

III.A. Men versus Women

In Table II, Panel A, we present position values and turnover
rates for the portfolios held by men and women. Women hold
slightly, but not dramatically smaller, common stock portfolios
($18,371 versus $21,975). Of greater interest is the difference in
turnover between women and men. Models of overconfidence
predict that women, who are generally less overconfident than
men, will trade less than men. The empirical evidence is consis-
tent with this prediction. Women turn their portfolios over ap-
proximately 53 percent annually (monthly turnover of 4.4 percent
times twelve), while men turn their portfolios over approximately
77 percent annually (monthly turnover of 6.4 percent times
twelve). We are able to comfortably reject the null hypothesis that
turnover rates are similar for men and women (at less than a 1
percent level). Although the median turnover is substantially less
for both men and women, the differences in the median levels of
turnover are also reliably different between genders.
In Table II, Panel B, we present the gross and net percentage
monthly own-benchmark abnormal returns for common stock
portfolios held by women and men. Women earn gross monthly
returns that are 0.041 percent lower than those earned by the
portfolio they held at the beginning of the year, while men earn
gross monthly returns that are 0.069 percent lower than those
earned by the portfolio they held at the beginning of the year.
Both shortfalls are statistically significant at the 1 percent level
as is their 0.028 difference (0.34 percent annually).
Turning to net own-benchmark returns, we find that women
earn net monthly returns that are 0.143 percent lower than those
earned by the portfolio they held at the beginning of the year,
while men earn net monthly returns that are 0.221 percent lower
than those earned by the portfolio they held at the beginning of
the year. Again, both shortfalls are statistically significant at the
1 percent level as is their difference of 0.078 percent (0.94 percent
annually).
Are the lower own-benchmark returns earned by men due to
more active trading or to poor security selection? The calculations
described in subsection H.E indicate that the stocks both men and
women choose to sen earn reliably greater returns than the stocks
they choose to buy. This is consistent with Odean [1999], who
uses different data to show that the stocks individual investors
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TABLE II I:>:)
....::J
POSITION VALUE, TuRNOVER, AND RETURN PERFORMANCE OF COMMON STOCK INVESTMENTS OF FEMALE (j)
AND MALE HOUSEHOLDS: FEBRUARY 1991 TO JANUARY 1997

All households Married households Single households

Difference Difference Difference

Women Men (women-men) Women Men (women-men) Women Men (women-men)
.0
Number of
households
8,005 29,659 NA 4,894 19,741 NA 2,306 6,326 NA
~
Panel A: Position Value and Turnover
t;5
Mean [median] 18,371 21,975 -3,604*** 17,754 22,293 -4,539*** 19,654 20,161 -507***
~
"'<:
beginning [7,387] [8,218] [-831]*** [7,410] [8,175] [-765]*** [7,491] [8,097] [-606]***
position value C3
($)
Mean [median] 4.40 6.41 -2.01*** 4.41 6.11 -1.70*** 4.22 7.05 -2.83***
~
monthly
turnover (%)
[1.74] [2.94] [-1.20]*** [1.79] [2.81] [1.02]*** [1.55] [3.32] [-1.77]***
~
Panel B: Performance ~
t.>::l
Own-benchmark -0.041 *** -0.069*** 0.028*** -0.050*** -0.068*** 0.018 -0.029* -0.074*** 0.045*** Q

~
monthly
abnormal gross (-2.84) ( -3.66) (2.43) ( -2.89) (-3.67) (1.28) (-1.64) (-3.60) (2.53)
return (%)
Own-benchmark -0.143*** -0.221*** 0.078*** -0.154*** -0.214*** 0.060*** -0.121 *** -0.242*** 0.120*** ~
monthly
abnormal net (-9.70) (-10.83) (6.35) ( -9.10) (-1D.48) (3.95) ( -6.68) (-11.15) (6.68)
~
return (%)

***, **, * indicate significant at the 1, 5, and 10 percent level, respectively. Tests for differences in medians are based on a Wilcoxon sign-rank test statistic.
Households are classified as female or male based on the gender of the person who opened the account. Beginning position value is the market value of common stocks held in
the first month that the household appears during our sample period. Mean monthly turnover is the average of sales and purchase turnover. [Median values are in brackets.]
Own-benchmark abnormal returns are the average household percentage monthly abnormal return calculated as the realized monthly return for a household less the return that
would have been earned if the household had held the beginning-of-year portfolio for the entire year (i.e., the twelve months beginning February 1). T-statistics for abnormal returns
are in parentheses and are calculated using time-series standard errors across months.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 277

sell earn reliably greater returns than the stocks they buy. We
find that the stocks men choose to purchase underperform those
that they choose to sell by twenty basis points per month (t =
- 2.79) .13 The stocks women choose to purchase underperform
those they choose to sell by seventeen basis points per month (t =
- 2.02). The difference in the underperformances of men and
women is not statistically significant. (When we weight each
trade equally rather than by its value, men's purchases under-
perform their sales by 23 basis points per month and women's
purchases underperform their sales by 22 basis points per
month.) Both men and women detract from their returns (gross
and net) by trading; men simply do so more often.
While not pertinent to our hypotheses-which predict that
overconfidence leads to excessive trading and that this trading
hurts performance-one might want to compare the raw returns
of men with those of women. During our sample period, men
earned average monthly gross and net returns of 1.501 and 1.325
percent; women earned average monthly gross and net returns of
1.482 and 1.361 percent. Men's gross and net average monthly
market-adjusted returns (the raw monthly return minus the
monthly return on the CRSP value-weighted index) were 0.081
and -0.095 percent; women's gross and net average monthly
market-adjusted returns were 0.062 and -0.059 percent.l4 For
none of these returns are the differences between men and
women statistically significant. The gross raw and market-ad-
justed returns earned by men and women differed in part be-
cause, as we document in subsection III.D, men tended to hold
smaller, higher beta stocks than did women; such stocks per-
formed well in our sample period.
In summary, our main findings are consistent with the two
predictions of the overconfidence models. First, men, who are
more overconfident than women, trade more than women (as
measured by monthly portfolio turnover). Second, men lower
their returns more through excessive trading than do women.

13. This t-statistic is calculated as

(Rim - R:m)
t =---------
a(Rfm - R:m)! Jf2'
14. The gross (net) annualized geometric mean returns earned by men and
women were 18.7 (16.3) and 18.6 (16.9) percent, respectively.
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278 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

Men lower their returns more than women because they trade
more, not because their security selections are worse.
III.B. Single Men versus Single Women
If gender serves as a reasonable proxy for overconfidence, we
would expect the differences in portfolio turnover and net return
performance to be larger between the accounts of single men and
single women than between the accounts of married men and
married women. This is because, as discussed above, one spouse
may make or influence decisions for an account opened by the
other. To test this ancillary prediction, we partition our sample
into four groups: married women, married men, single women,
and single men. Because we do not have marital status for all
heads of households in our data set, the total number of house-
holds that we analyze here is less than that previously analyzed
by about 4400.
Position values and turnover rates of the portfolios held by
the four groups are presented in the last six columns of Table II,
Panel A. Married women tend to hold smaller common stock
portfolios than married men; these differences are smaller be-
tween single men and single women. Differences in turnover are
larger between single women and men than between married
women and men, thus confirming our ancillary prediction.
In the last six columns of Table II, Panel B, we present the
gross and net percentage monthly own-benchmark abnormal re-
turns for common stock portfolios of the four groups. The gross
monthly own-benchmark abnormal returns of single women
(-0.029) and of single men (-0.074) are statistically significant
at the 1 percent level, as is their difference (O.045-annually 0.54
percent). We again stress that it is not the superior timing ofthe
security selections of women that leads to these gross return
differences. Men (and particularly single men) are simply more
likely to act (i.e., trade) despite their inferior ability.
The net monthly own-benchmark abnormal returns of mar-
ried women (-0.154) and married men (-0.214) are statistically
significant at the 1 percent level, as is their difference (0.060).
The net monthly own-benchmark abnormal returns of single
women (-0.121) and of single men (-0.242) are statistically
significant at the 1 percent level, as is their difference (0.120-
annually 1.4 percent). Single men underperform single women by
significantly more than married men underperform married
women (0.120 - 0.60 = 0.60; t = 2.80).
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 279

In summary, if married couples influence each other's invest-

ment decisions and thereby reduce the effects of gender differ-
ences in overconfidence, then the results of this section are con-
sistent with the predictions of the overconfidence models. First,
men trade more than women, and this difference is greatest
between single men and women. Second, men lower their returns
more through excessive trading than do women, and this differ-
ence is greatest between single men and women.

III.C. Cross-Sectional Analysis of Turnover and Performance

Perhaps turnover and performance differ between men and
women because gender correlates with other attributes that pre-
dict turnover and performance. We therefore consider several
demographic characteristics known to affect financial decision-
making: age, marital status, the presence of children in a house-
hold, and income.
To assess whether the differences in turnover can be attrib-
uted to these demographic characteristics, we estimate a cross-
sectional regression where the dependent variable is the observed
average monthly turnover for each household. The independent
variables in the regression include three dummy variables: mari-
tal status (one indicating single), gender (one indicating woman),
and the presence of children (one indicating a household with
children). In addition, we estimate the interaction between mari-
tal status and gender. Finally, we include the age of the person
who opened the account and household income. Since our income
measure is truncated at $125,000, we also include a dummy
variable if household income was greater than $125,000. 15
We present the results of this analysis in column 2 of Table
III; they support our earlier findings. The estimated dummy
variable on gender is highly significant (t = -12.76) and indi-
cates that (ceteris paribus) the monthly turnover in married
women's accounts is 146 basis points less than in married men's.
The differences in turnover are significantly more pronounced
between single women and single men; ceteris paribus, single

15. Average monthly turnover for each household is calculated for the
months during which common stock holdings are reported for that household.
Marital status, gender, the presence of children, age, and income are from Info-
base's records as of June 8, 1997. Thus, the dependent variable is observed before
the independent variables. This is also true for the cross-sectional tests reported
below.
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280 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

TABLE III
CROSS-SECTIONAL REGRESSIONS OF TURNOVER, OWN-BENCHMARK ABNORMAL
RETURN, BETA, AND SIZE: FEBRUARY 1991 TO JANUARY 1997

Mean Own-
monthly benchmark
Dependent turnover abnormal Portfolio Individual Size
variable (%) net return volatility volatility Beta coefficient

Intercept 6.269*** -0.321*** 11.466*** 11.658*** 1.226+ 0.776***

( -11.47) (58.85) (70.98) (11.44) (22.16)
Single 0.483*** 0.002 0.320*** 0.330*** 0.020** 0.079***
(4.24) (0.14) (3.40) (4.17) (2.12) (4.65)
Woman 1.461 *** 0.058*** -0.689*** -0.682*** --0.037*** -0.136***
( -12.76) (4.27) ( -7.27) (-8.54) (--3.91) ( -8.00)
Single x -0.733*** 0.027 -0.439** -0.540*** -0.029 --0.138***
woman (-3.38) (1.08) (-2.45) (-3.57) ( -1.60) ( -4.30)
Age/l0 -0.311*** 0.002*** -0.536*** --0.393*** -0.027*** -0.055***
(-9.26) (4.23) ( -19.31) (-16.78) ( -9.55) ( -11.00)
Children -0.037 0.008 -0.014 --0.051 -0.002 -0.008
( -0.40) (0.76) ( -0.19) (-0.79) (-0.22) (-0.61)
Income -0.002 0.0002 0.0003 0.001 0.003 0.001
/1000 ( --1.30) (1.33) (0.22) (1.38) (2.49)** (0.31)
Income -0.0003 0.027 0.011 0.012 -0.008 -0.018
dummy (-0.24) (1.54) (0.10) (0.11) (-0.68) (-0.82)
Adj. R2 (%) 1.53 0.20 2.11 1.95 0.59 1.19

***, **, * indicate significantly different from zero at the 1, 5, and 10 percent level, respectively.
+ indicates significantly different from one at the 1 percent level.
Each regression is estimated using data from 26,618 households. The dependent variables are the mean
monthly percentage turnover for each household, the mean monthly own~benchmark abnormal net return for
each household, the portfolio volatility for each household, the average volatility of the individual common
stocks held by each household, estimated beta exposure for each household, and estimated size exposure for
each household. Own~benchmark abnormal Ilet returns are calculated as the realized monthly return for a
household less the return that would have been earned if the household had held the beginning~of-year
portfolio for the entire year. Portfolio volatility is the standard deviation of each household's monthly portfolio
returns. Individual volatility is the average standard deviation of monthly returns over the previous three
years for each stock in a household's portfolio. The average is weighted equally across months and by position
size within months. The estimated exposures are the coefficient estimates on the independent variables from
time-series regressions of the gross household excess return on the market excess return (R mt - R lt ) and a
zero-investment size portfolio (SMB t ). Single is a dummy variable that takes a value of one if the primary
account holder (PAR) is single. Woman is a dummy variable that takes a value of one if the primary account
holder is a woman. Age is the age of the PAll. Children is a dummy variable that takes a value of one if the
household has children. Income is the income of the household and has a maximum value of$125,000. VVhen
Income is at this maximum, Income dummy takes on a value of one. (t-statistics are in parentheses.)

women trade 219 basis points (146 plus 73) less than single men.
Of the control variables we consider, only age is significant;
monthly turnover declines by 31 basis points per decade that
we age.
We next consider whether our performance results can be
explained by other demographic characteristics. To do so, we
estimate a cross-sectional regression in which the dependent
variable is the monthly own-benchmark abnormal net return
earned by each household. The independent variables for the
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 281

regression are the same as those previously employed. 16 The

results of this analysis, presented in column 3 of Table III, con-
firm our earlier finding that men deduct more from their return
performance by trading than do women. The estimated dummy
variable on gender is highly significant (t = 4.27) and indicates
that (ceteris paribus) the monthly own-benchmark abnormal net
return for married men is 5.8 basis points less than for married
women. The difference in the performance of single men and
women, 8.5 basis points a month (5.8 plus 2.7), is even greater
than that of their married counterparts, although not reliably so.
Of the control variables that we consider, only age appears as
statistically significant; own-benchmark abnormal net returns
improve by 0.2 basis points per decade that we age. (The last four
columns of Table III are discussed in the following subsection.)
III.D. Portfolio Risk
In this subsection we estimate risk characteristics of the
common stock investments of men and women. Although not the
central focus of our inquiry, we believe the results that we present
here are the first to document that women tend to hold less risky
positions than men within their common stock portfolios. Our
analysis also provides additional evidence that men decrease
their portfolio returns through trading more so than do women.
We estimate market risk (beta) and the risk associated with
small firms by estimating the following two-factor monthly time-
series regression:
(RMf - Rft) = OLi + f3i(R mt -- R ft ) + 8iSMBt + Ei/)
where
Rft = the monthly return on T-Bills,17

16. The statistical significance of the results reported in this section should
be interpreted with caution. On one hand, the standard errors of the coefficient
estimates are likely to be infl.ated, since the dependent variable is estimated with
error. (Although we observe several months of each household's own-benchmark
returns, a household's observed own-benchmark returns may differ from its
long-run average.) On the other hand, these standard errors may be deflated,
since different households may choose to trade in or out of the same security
resulting in cross-sectional dependence in the abnormal performance measure
across households. We suspect that the problem of cross-sectional dependence is
not severe, since the average household invests in only four securities.
To reduce the undue infl.uence of a few households with position statements
for only a few months, we delete those households with less than three years of
positions. The tenor of our results is similar if we include these households.
17. The return on T-bills is from Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation, 1997
Yearbook, Ibbotson Associates, Chicago, IL.
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282 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

R mt = the monthly return on a value-weighted market index,

5MB t = the return on a value-weighted portfolio of small stocks
minus the return on a value-weighted portfolio of big
stocks,18
(Xi = the intercept,
l3i = the market beta,
Si = coefficient of size risk, and
Eit = the regression error term.

The subscript i denotes parameter estimates and error terms

from regression i, where we estimate twelve regressions: one each
for the gross and net performances of the average man, the
average married man, and the average single man, and one each
for the gross and net performance of the average woman, the
average married woman, and the average single woman.
In each regression the estimate of l3i measures portfolio risk
due to covariance with the market portfolio. The estimate of Si
measures risk associated with the size of the firms held in a
portfolio; a larger value of Si denotes increased exposure to small
stocks. Fama and French [1993] and Berk [1995] argue that firm
size is a proxy for risk. 19 Finally, the intercept, (Xi, is an estimate
of risk-adjusted return and thus provides an alternative perfor-
mance measure to our own-benchmark abnormal return.
The results of this analysis are presented in Table N. The
time-series regressions of the gross average monthly excess re-
turn earned by women and men on the market excess return and
a size based zero-investment portfolio reveal that women hold
less risky positions than men. While, relative to the total market,
both women and men tilt their portfolios toward high beta, small
firms, women do so less. These regressions also confirm our find-
ing that men decrease their portfolio returns through trading
more so than do women. Men and women earn similar gross and
net returns; however, men do so by investing in smaller stocks

18. The construction of this portfolio is discussed in detail in Fama and

French [1993]. We thank Kenneth French for providing us with these data.
19. Berk [1995] points out that systematic effects in returns are likely to
appear in price, since price is the value of future cash flows discounted by expected
return. Thus, size and the book-to-market ratio are likely to correlate with
cross-sectional differences in expected returns. Fama and French [1993] also
claim that size and the book-to-market ratio proxy for risk. Not all authors agree
that book-to-market ratios are risk proxies (e.g., Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny
[1994]). Our qualitative results are unaffected by the inclusion of a book-to-
market factor.
 TABLE IV
RISK EXPOSURES AND RISK-ADJUSTED RETURNS OF COMMON STOCK INVESTMENTS OF FEMALE
AND MALE HOUSEHOLDS: FEBRUARY 1991 TO JANUARY 1997

All households Married households Single households

Difference Difference Difference

Women Men (women-men) Women Men (women-men) Women Men (women-men)

Number of
households 8,005 29,659 NA 4,894 19,741 NA 2,306 6,326 NA

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Panel A: Gross average household percentage monthly returns b:l
Two-factor a
model ~
intercept -0.044 -0.083 0.039 -0.051 -0.082 0.031 -0.036 -0.099 0.063
Two-factor ~
t-<
model t-<
coefficient b:l
estimate tt:l
on (R mt - b:l
R ft ) 1.050*** 1.081 *** -0.031** 1.053*** 1.075*** 0.022* 1.035*** 1.088*** 0.053*** a
Two-factor ~
model
coefficient
estimate
onSMB t 0.360*** 0.519*** -0.159*** 0.380*** 0.490*** 0.109*** 0.307*** 0.582*** 0.275***
Adjusted R2 93.8 92.0 65.3 93.4 92.1 52.8 94.4 91.5 70.6
Panel B: Net average household percentage monthly returns
Two-factor
model
intercept -0.162* -0.253** 0.091 *** -0.171** -0.245** 0.074** -0.142** -0.285** 0.143***
t-:l
", **, * indicate significant at the 1, 5, and 10 percent level, respectively. 00
Households are classified as female or male based on the gender of the person who opened the account. Households are classified as married or single based on the marital status W
of the head of household. Coefficient and intercept estimates for the two-factor model are those from a time-series regression of the gross (net) average household excess return on
the market excess return (R mt - R ft ) and a zero-investment size portfolio (8MB t ): (RMr - R ft ) = <Xl + ~i(Rmt - Rtf} + B l 8MB t + E/,f'
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284 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

with higher market risk. 20 The intercepts from the two-factor

regressions of net returns (Table IV, Panel B) suggest that, after
a reasonable accounting for the higher market and size risks of
men's portfolios, women earn net returns that are reliably higher
(by nine basis points per month or 1.1 percent annually) than
those earned by men. 21
Beta and size may not be the only two risk factors that
concern individual investors. These investors hold, on average,
only four common stocks in their portfolios. Those without other
common stock or mutual fund holdings bear a great deal of
idiosyncratic risk. To measure differences in the idiosyncratic
risk exposures of men and women, we estimate the volatility of
their common stock portfolios as well as the average volatility of
the stocks they hold. We calculate portfolio volatility as the stan-
dard deviation of each household's monthly portfolio returns for
the months in which the household held common stocks. We
calculate the average volatility of the individual stocks they hold
as the average standard deviation of monthly returns during the
previous three calendar years for each stock in a household's
portfolio. This average is weighted by position size within months
and equally across months.
To test whether men and women differ in the volatility of
their portfolios and of the stocks they hold, and to confirm that
they differ in the market risk and size risk of their portfolios, we
estimate four additional cross-sectional regressions. As in the
cross-sectional regressions of turnover and own-benchmark re-
turns, the independent variables in these regressions include
dummy variables for marital status, gender, the presence of chil-
dren in the household, and the interaction between marital status
and gender, as well as variables for age and income and a dummy

20. During our sample period, the mean monthly return on 5MB t was sev-
enteen basis points.
21. Fama and French [1993] argue that the risk of common stock investments
can be parsimoniously summarized as risk related to the market, firm size, and a
firm's book-to-market ratio. When the return on a value-weighted portfolio of high
book-to-market stocks minus the return on a value-weighted portfolio of low
book-to-market stocks (HML t ) is added as an independent variable to the two-
factor monthly time-series regressions, we find that both men and women tilt
their portfolios toward high book-to-market stocks, although men do more so. The
intercepts from these regressions indicate that after accounting for the market,
size, and book-to-market tilts of their portfolios, women outperformed men by
twelve basis points a month (1.4 percent annually). Lyon, Barber, and Tsai [1999]
document that intercept tests using the three-factor model are well specified in
random samples and samples of large or small firms. Thus, the Fama-French
intercept tests account well for the small stock tilt of individual investors. During
our sample period, the mean monthly return on HML t was twenty basis points.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 285

variable for income over $125,000. The dependent variable is

alternately, the volatility of each household's portfolio, the aver-
age volatility of the individual stocks held by each household, the
coefficient on the market risk premium (i.e., beta) and the coeffi-
cient on the size zero-investment portfolio. Both coefficients are
estimated from the two-factor model described above. 22
We present the results of these regressions in the last four
columns of Table III. For all four risk measures (portfolio volatil-
ity, individual stock volatility, beta, and size) men invest in
riskier positions than women. Of the control variables that we
consider, marital status, age, and income appear to be correlated
with the riskiness ofthe stocks in which a household invests. The
young and single hold more volatile portfolios composed of more
volatile stocks. They are more willing to accept market risk and to
invest in small stocks. Those with higher incomes are also more
willing to accept market risk. These results are completely in
keeping with the common-sense notion that the young and
wealthy with no dependents are willing to accept more invest-
ment risk.
The risk differences in the common stock portfolios held by
men and women are not surprising. There is considerable evi-
dence that men and women have different attitudes toward risk.
From survey responses of 5200 men and 6400 women, Barsky,
,Juster, Kimball, and Shapiro [1997J conclude that women are
more risk-averse than men. Analyzing off-track betting slips for
2000 men and 2000 women, Bruce and Johnson [1994] find that
men take larger risks than women although they find no evidence
of differences in performance. Jianakoplos and Bernasek [1998]
report that roughly 60 percent of the female respondents to the
1989 Survey of Consumer Finances, but only 40 percent of the
men, said they were not willing to take any financial risks. Kara-
benick and Addy [1979], Sorrentino, Hewitt, and Raso-Knott
[1992], and Zinkhan and Karande [1991] observe that men have
riskier preferences than women. Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz [1994],
Finucane, Slovic, Mertz, Flynn, and Satterfield [2000], and Finu-
cane and Slovic [1999] find that white men perceive a wide
variety of risks as lower than do women and nonwhite men.
Bajtelsmit and Bernasek [1996], Bajtelsmit and VanDerhei

22. These regressions are estimated for households with at least three years
of available data. Statistical inference might also be affected by measurement
error in the dependent variable and cross-sectional dependence in the risk mea-
sures (see footnotes 11 and 12).
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286 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

[1997], Hinz, McCarthy, and Turner [1997], and Sunden and

Surette [1998] find that men hold more of their retirement sav-
ings in risky assets. Jianakoplos and Bernasek [1998] report the
same for overall wealth. Papke [1998], however, finds in a sample
of near retirement women and their spouses, that women do not
invest their pensions more conservatively than men.

IV. COMPETING EXPLANATIONS FOR DIFFERENCES

IN TURNOVER AND PERFORMANCE

IV.A. Risk Aversion

Since men and women differ in both overconfidence and risk
aversion, it is natural to ask whether differences in risk aversion
alone explain our findings. They do not. While rational informed
investors will trade more ifthey are less risk averse, they will also
improve their performance by trading. Thus, if rational and in-
formed, men (and women) should improve their performance by
trading. But both groups hurt their performance by trading. And
men do so more than women. This outcome can be explained by
differences in the overconfidence of men and women and by dif-
ferences in the risk aversion of overconfident men and women. It
cannot be explained by differences in risk aversion alone.

IV.B. Gambling
To what extent may gender differences in the propensity to
gamble explain the differences in turnover and returns that we
observe? There are two aspects of gambling that we consider:
risk-seeking and entertainment.
Risk-seeking is when one demonstrates a preference for out-
comes with greater variance but equal or lower expected return.
In equity markets the simplest way to increase variance without
increasing expected return is to underdiversify. Excessive trading
has a related, but decidedly different effect; it decreases expected
returns without decreasing variance. Thus risk-seeking may ac-
count for underdiversification (although lack of diversification
could also result from simple ignorance of its benefits or from
overconfidence), but it does not explain excessive trading.
It may be that some men, and to a lesser extent women, trade
for entertainment. They may enjoy placing trades that they ex-
pect, on average, will lose money. It is more likely that even those
who enjoy trading believe, overconfidently, that they have trading
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 287

ability. This would be consistent with the Gallup Poll finding

(reported in subsection I.E) that both men and women expect
their own portfolios to outperform the market, but that men
anticipate a greater outperformance.
Some investors may set aside a small portion of their wealth
to trade for entertainment, while investing the majority more
prudently. If "entertainment accounts" are driving our findings,
we would expect turnover and underperformance to decline as the
common stocks in the accounts we observe represent a larger
proportion of each household's total wealth. We find, however,
that this is not the case.
Approximately one-third of our households reported their net
worth at the time they opened their accounts. We calculate the
proportion of net worth invested in the common stock portfolios
we observe as the beginning value of a household's common stock
investments scaled by its self-reported net worth. 23 We then ana-
lyze the turnover and investment performance of 2333 house-
holds with at least 50 percent of their net worth invested in
common stock at this brokerage. These households have similar
turnover (6.25 percent per month,24 75 percent annually) to our
full sample (Table II). Furthermore, these households earn gross
and net returns that are very similar to the full sample.
If households trade actively solely for entertainment, then it
is likely that the households that trade most actively find trading
most entertaining. How much does active trading cost these
households compared with their other household expenses? To
estimate the cost of trading for the 20 percent of households in our
sample that trade most actively, we calculate the monthly dollar
loss as the own-benchmark abnormal return times the beginning
of month position value. This monthly dollar loss is averaged
across months for each household and multiplied by twelve to
obtain an average annual cost oftrading. The average annual cost
of trading for the quintile of most active traders is $2849. The
Department of Labor Consumer Expenditure Survey reports on
various categories of household expenditures. The Survey parti-
tions households into quintiles based on household income. The
average annual income ($74,000)25 of the quintile of most actively

23. This estimate is biased because the account opening date

generally precedes our first position observation and net worth is likely
to have increased in the interimo
24. The standard error of the mean turnover is 0020
250 This average annual income is understated since in calculating
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288 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

trading households in our sample corresponds most closely to that

of the mean income ($92,523) of the top quintile of the 1996
Survey. The active traders in our sample spent on average 3.9
percent oftheir annual income on trading costs, while comparable
households in the Survey spent 3.3 percent of their income on
utilities, 2.6 percent on health care, and 4.0 percent on all enter-
tainment expenses including fees, admissions, television, radio,
and sound equipment, pets, toys, and playground equipment. If
the active traders in our sample are trading solely for entertain-
ment, they must find it very entertaining indeed.
For mutual funds, as for individuals, turnover has a negative
impact on returns [Carhart 1997].26 Some mutual fund managers
may actively trade, and thereby knowingly reduce their funds'
expected returns, simply to create the illusion that they are
providing a valuable service [Dow and Gorton 1994]. If the ma-
jority of active managers believe that they offer only disservice to
their clients, this is a cynical industry indeed. We propose that
most mutual fund managers, while aware that active manage-
ment on average detracts value, believe that their personal abil-
ity to manage is above average. Thus, they are motivated to trade
by overconfidence, not cynicism.
Individuals may trade for entertainment. Mutual fund man-
agers may trade to appear busy. It is unlikely that most individ-
uals churn their accounts to appear busy or that most fund
managers trade for fun. Overconfidence offers a simple explana-
tion for the high trading activity of both groups.

v. CONCLUSION

Modern financial economics assumes that we behave with

extreme rationality; but, we do not. Furthermore, our deviations
from rationality are often systematic. Behavioral finance relaxes
the traditional assumptions of financial economics by incorporat-
ing these observable, systematic, and very human departures
from rationality into standard models of financial markets. Over-
confidence is one such departure. Models that assume market

average household income, we treat households in the over $125,000 category as

if their incomes were $125,000. These account for less than 12 percent of the
households for which we have income data.
26. Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny [1992] report a positive relation be-
tween turnover and performance for 769 all-equity pension funds, although this
finding puzzles the authors.
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS 289

participants are overconfident yield one central prediction: over-

confident investors will trade too much.
We test this prediction by partitioning investors on the basis
of a variable that provides a natural proxy for overconfidence-
gender. Psychological research has established that men are
more prone to overconfidence than women, particularly so in
male-dominated realms such as finance. Rational investors trade
only if the expected gains exceed transactions costs. Overconfi-
dent investors overestimate the precision of their information and
thereby the expected gains of trading. They may even trade when
the true expected net gains are negative. Models of investor
overconfidence predict that, since men are more overconfident
than women, men will trade more and perform worse than
women.
Our empirical tests provide strong support for the behavioral
finance model. Men trade more than women and thereby reduce
their returns more so than do women. Furthermore, these differ-
ences are most pronounced between single men and single
women.
Individuals turn over their common stock investments about
70 percent annually [Barber and Odean 2000]. Mutual funds
have similar turnover rates [Carhart 1997]. Yet, those individu-
als and mutual funds that trade most earn the lowest returns. We
believe that there is a simple and powerful explanation for the
high levels of counterproductive trading in financial markets:
overconfidence.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

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