Wilber G. Lewellen, Ronald C. Lease and Gary G. Schlarbaum

The Journal of Business, Volume 50, Issue 3 (Jul., 1977)

Abstract

In recent years, a substantial amount of attention has been directed in the literature of economics and finance to the question of the investment behaviour and portfolio performance of institutional investors. Those investigations are natural one, both because the relevant portfolio data are reasonably accessible and because the institutions involved are rapidly growing accumulators and traders of corporate equity securities. The traditional bulwark of the American equity marketplace - the individual investor - however has been an object of scrutiny only in very aggregative terms. The trend of his apparent withdrawal from direct market participation has been amply documented, and the appropriate alarums expressed, but the causes of the phenomenon remain almost entirely conjectural. Indeed virtually all we believe we know about the individual investors' circumstances and decision processes has been inferred from either broad trading statistics, general security price movements or portfolio simulations. With few exceptions, very little in the way of explicit observation has been attempted - due undoubtedly to the fact that the necessary data are exceedingly difficult to acquire.