Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
4-2025
Abstract
This paper examines the trading behavior of retail and institutional investors during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. Using transaction-level data, it compares how retail and institutional investors trade over the government announcements, lockdown, and reopening periods. Retail and institutional investors' trading intensifies around government announcements, which facilitates attenuating illiquidity during the lockdown. Nevertheless, while retail trading is substantially more prominent during the lockdown than over the control and reopening periods, institutional investors do not trade significantly more per se or on announcements during the lockdown but trade less during the reopening. Their trading also relates to contemporaneous returns, and their effects differ across certain sub-periods and on government announcements. Our findings suggest that while the announcements and emotions drive the retail investors' trading, institutions may trade more on firms' fundamentals.
Keywords
Attention-induced trading, COVID-19, Government announcements, Institutional investors, Retail investors
Discipline
Finance and Financial Management | Portfolio and Security Analysis
Publication
Pacific-Basin Finance Journal
Volume
90
First Page
1
Last Page
20
ISSN
0927-538X
Identifier
10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102634
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
WILKINSON, Finn West; FINTA, Marinela Adriana; and ONISHCHENKO, Olena.
COVID-19 and investors' trading behavior: Evidence from the New Zealand equity market. (2025). Pacific-Basin Finance Journal. 90, 1-20.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7680
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102634
