Brown Bag Seminar - Tobin Hanspal (Vienna University of Economics and Business)

We are pleased to welcome Tobin Hanspal (Vienna University of Economics and Business) as a speaker.

He will present his paper “Rebuying the Dip.”

Abstract:

Retail investor behavior is commonly associated with both momentum trading and contrarian “buying-the-dip” behavior, yet the literature offers little guidance on how these two patterns coexist. I show that it depends on ownership. I use transaction and holding data from two German brokerages and a large U.S. discount broker to distinguish net-new stock purchases from additions to existing holdings. Conditional on buying, the same investor on the same day purchases stocks with higher prior returns and adds to stocks with lower returns. Purchases following large daily gains come disproportionately from non-holders, whereas existing holders account for a larger share after price declines. This effect is less pronounced for funds and ETFs. Rebalancing toward past portfolio weights does not explain investors’ propensity to add to positions below their cost basis. My findings imply that retail investors’ buying response to recent returns depends on ownership composition and investors’ purchase history.

The Brown Bag Seminar will take place on November 5, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in Room D2.0.342.