Stock Market Anomalies and Baseball Cards *

Baseball cards exhibit anomalies that are analogous to those that have been documented in financial markets, namely, momentum, price drift in the direction of past fundamental performance, and IPO underperformance. Momentum profits are higher among active players than retired players, and among newer sets than older sets. Regarding IPO underperformance, we find newly issued rookie cards underperform newly issued cards of veteran players, and that newly issued sets underperform older sets. The results are broadly consistent with models of slow information diffusion and short-selling constraints. * We thank Dan Bradley, Roni Michaely, Matthew Spiegel, and seminar participants at the University of South Florida for their useful feedback. ‡ Contact: Joseph Engelberg, University of California – San Diego, Rady School of Management, (Email) [email protected] (Tel) 858-822-7912; Linh Le, University of South Florida, Muma College of Business, (Email) [email protected]; and Jared Williams, University of South Florida, Muma College of Business, (Email) [email protected].