We interpret industry discount rates as proxies for value investment, grounded in Q theory, while capturing gambling preferences through salience theory. Integrating these perspectives, we propose a novel asset pricing model (ST-ICAPM) that unifies value investment and salience factors, evaluating its pricing efficacy across Chinese industries from 2004 to 2023. Empirical results show that investment factors tend to negatively predict future returns, while growth factors command risk premia. However, profitability factors exhibit limited explanatory power. Investor expectations are primarily driven by profit growth, emphasizing the need to enhance profit stability for a value-oriented market. Salience intensity, especially when measured via eigenvector centrality within industry networks, serves as a strong negative predictor of returns, emphasizing the importance of conceptual connections over purely economic linkages in shaping investor behavior. Robust tests confirm that the ST-ICAPM outperforms benchmark models (FF3, CARHART4, FF5, ICAPM, and STCAPM) in terms of pricing power. Our findings emphasize the need to promote value investing and restrain gambling behavior as essential strategies to cultivate a resilient capital market in China.

This paper documents a stock-dividend premium of around 10% when controlling for optimistic earnings growth and liquidity improvement. We propose an alternative explanation for the effect of stock dividends from the perspective of investor recognition. First, we find that stock-dividend premiums are positively related to an increase in investor base, particularly for firms with a small investor base. Second, an increase in investor base is due to individual investors, as they, especially those with a stronger propensity to gamble, are net buyers around the announcement of stock dividends, while institutional investors behave in the opposite manner. Finally, we show that after paying stock dividends, firms experience significant increases in speculative features, which are caused by clientele shifts toward individual investors as opposed to the undertaking of riskier projects by managers. As a whole, our results also indicate that an increase in investor base could be related to investors’ gambling preferences.

This paper documents a stock-dividend premium of around 10% when controlling for optimistic earnings growth and liquidity improvement. We propose an alternative explanation for the effect of stock dividends from the perspective of investor recognition. First, we find that stock-dividend premiums are positively related to an increase in investor base, particularly for firms with a small investor base. Second, an increase in investor base is due to individual investors, as they, especially those with a stronger propensity to gamble, are net buyers around the announcement of stock dividends, while institutional investors behave in the opposite manner. Finally, we show that after paying stock dividends, firms experience significant increases in speculative features, which are caused by clientele shifts toward individual investors.. As a whole, our results also indicate that an increase in investor base could be related to investors' gambling preferences.

Using comprehensive account-level data from 2016 to 2019, we examine retail investor trading behavior in the Chinese stock market. We separate millions of retail investors into five groups by their account sizes and document strong heterogeneity in their trading dynamics and performance. Retail investors with smaller account sizes cannot predict future price movements correctly, in the sense that they buy future losers and sell future winners. These investors fail to process public news and display behavioral biases such as overconfidence and gambling preferences. In sharp contrast, retail investors with larger account balances predict future returns correctly, incorporate public news in their trading, and gain more in stocks which are more attractive to investors with behavioral biases. For liquidity provision, the smaller retail investors follow daily momentum strategies, demanding immediate liquidity, while they become contrarian over weekly horizons, and they contribute positively towards firm-level liquidity. On the contrary, larger retail investors ae contrarian at daily horizons, providing immediate liquidity, but their potentially informed trades demand liquidity over longer terms.