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While investors display clear skill in buying, their selling decisions underperform substantially (Link)
"We present evidence consistent with limited attention as a key driver of this discrepancy, with investors devoting more resources to buy decisions than sell decisions. When attentional resources are more likely to be equally distributed between prospective purchases and sales, specifically around company earnings announcement days, stocks sold outperform counterfactual strategies similar to buys. We document managers' use of a heuristic that overweights a salient attribute of portfolio assets - past returns - when selling, whereas we do not observe similar heuristic use for buys. Assets with extreme returns are more than 50% more likely to be sold than those that just under- or over-performed. Finally, we document that the use of the heuristic appears to a mistake and is linked empirically with substantial overall underperformance in selling."
CPP ads on one of the most expensive TV spots for Canadian TV. (Link)
"Canadian viewers of this year’s NFL’s wild card weekend were startled to see a certain commercial in heavy rotation. No, not the Budweiser Clydesdales, or the burger and soft drink ads that are the pricey broadcasts’ usual fare. Rather, this important message was brought to you by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. “You don’t think about CPP Investment Board,” the announcer chirped, while the usual assortment of smiling Canadians went blissfully about their assorted business, “but we think about you every day.” Indeed, “while you may not think about it, you started saving for retirement with your first paycheque.” Cue the music (Great Big Sea’s “Ordinary Day”) and the slogan: “Investing today for your tomorrow.”
Canadian Equities
