Defining Bad News: Changes in Return Distributions That Decrease Risky Asset Demand

We provide a random variable characterization of the necessary and sufficient conditions for a shift of the distribution of rate of return on the risky asset in the two asset portfolio problem to reduce demand for all risk–averse expected utility maximizing investors. We provide random variable characterizations of the shifts that reduce both demand and expected utility for all risk–averse investors and a random variable characterization of shifts in the payoff of the market portfolio that reduce the equilibrium price of the market portfolio and make all risk–investors worse off.