Birds of a feather flock together: A study of new shareholders and Swedish IPOs

This paper analyzes new individual investors (rookies) and the importance of initial public offerings (IPOs) in attracting rookies to the stock market, which is an issue previous research has not focused on. The paperuses stock ownership records for publicly listed Swedish firms together with data on IPOs for the period2004–2010. We find the proportion of IPO investors among rookies to be larger than for non-rookies andthat rookies are more likely to invest in IPOs than non-rookies. Thus, IPOs appear to attract rookies to alarger extent than non-rookies. Moreover, rookies investing in IPOs have a higher income and hold largerstock portfolios, but they receive lower returns compared with other rookies. In addition, the results showthat even for rookies, sophisticated investors receive higher returns than less sophisticated investors.