In this paper we investigate if directors of Australian companies earn persistent profits on their reported trades, if these abnormal profits are significant enough to be mimicked by outsiders, and if these insider trades have an effect on returns of other investors. We find that insiders take advantage of their private information in stocks of...

Abstract: We investigate the short-term relation between individual investor trading and stock returns on the Australian Securities Exchange. Stocks heavily bought by individual investors underperform stocks heavily sold over the subsequent three days, with respective returns on to a long-short portfolio of -93, -67 and -12 basis points on days one, two, and three. Individuals...