Five Facts about Beliefs and Portfolios

We study a newly designed survey administered to large panel of wealthy retail investors. The elicits beliefs that are important for macroeconomics and finance, matches respondents with administrative data on their portfolio composition, trading activity, login behavior. establish five facts inthese data. (i) Beliefs reflected in allocations. sensitivity portfolios is small average, but varies significantly investor wealth, attention, frequency, confidence. (ii) Belief changes do not predict when investors trade, conditional trading, they affect both the direction magnitude trades. (iii) mostly characterized by persistent individual heterogeneity. Demographic characteristics explain only asmall part why some individuals optimistic pessimistic. (iv) Expected cash flow growth expected returns positively related, within across (v) subjective probability rare disasters negatively These provide useful guidance design macro-finance models. (JEL D83, E23, G11, G12, G41, G51)