The Investor-Base Hypothesis of Stock Return Volatility: Empirical Evidence

36 Pages Posted: 28 Apr 2015 Last revised: 2 Jun 2016

See all articles by Håkan Jankensgård

Håkan Jankensgård

Stockholm University - Stockholm Business School

Anders Vilhelmsson

Lund University - Department of Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: April 27, 2015

Abstract

A conjecture in the literature holds that a large and diversified investor base leads to lower volatility by improving the quality of the price signal. In this paper this hypothesis is examined using unique Swedish ownership data. The data does not support the conjecture. Instead, volatility increases in the number of investors and in the size of the firm’s micro-float (the fraction of shares held by investors with stakes below 0.1%). In separate regressions we show that trading volume increases in the size of the investor base, suggesting a trading channel explanation. We also show that proxies for the portfolio concentration of the largest owners are important. We conclude that ownership structure has major implications for stock return volatility.

Keywords: Volatility, ownership, investor base, portfolio concentration

JEL Classification: G30, G32

Suggested Citation

Jankensgård, Håkan and Vilhelmsson, Anders, The Investor-Base Hypothesis of Stock Return Volatility: Empirical Evidence (April 27, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2599488 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2599488

Håkan Jankensgård (Contact Author)

Stockholm University - Stockholm Business School ( email )

Sweden

Anders Vilhelmsson

Lund University - Department of Economics ( email )

Lund
Sweden

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