An odd lotter is an investor who purchases

shares In financial markets, a share (sometimes referred to as stock or equity) is a unit of equity ownership in the capital stock of a corporation. It can refer to units of mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts. Sha ...

or other

securities A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any for ...

in small or unusual quantities. Stocks are typically traded in increments of 100 shares, a quantity known as a '' round lot'' or ''board lot''. The cost of 100 shares of a security may be beyond the means of an individual investor, or may represent a larger investment than the investor wishes to make. Thus, the investor purchases an odd lot.

Odd lot theory

Odd lotters were central to a historical theory of

technical analysis In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for analysing and forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. As a type of active management, it stands in contradiction to ...

known as odd lot theory. Odd lot theory was predicated on the belief that one could outperform the stock market by identifying the least-informed investors and making investments opposite to them. (If the least-informed investors were selling, it was generally a good time to buy, and vice versa.) Assuming that odd lotters were generally smaller investors with little market knowledge, practitioners of odd lot theory identified the actions of odd lotters and did the opposite. The actions of odd lotters were interpreted as contrary signals. The theory is no longer popular as analysis of data shows little evidence that the method works. According to

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

economist

Burton Malkiel Burton Gordon Malkiel (born August 28, 1932) is an American economist, financial executive, and writer most noted for his classic finance book ''A Random Walk Down Wall Street'' (first published 1973, in its 13th edition as of 2023). Malkiel i ...

: "It turns out that the odd-lotter isn't such a stupendous dodo after all. A little stupid? Maybe. There is some indication that the performance of odd-lotters might be slightly worse than the stock averages. However, the available evidence indicates that knowledge of odd-lotters' actions is not useful for the formulation of investment strategies." The theory was the subject of much analysis in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s, however, the theory had fallen out of use. In addition to the theory's general ineffectiveness, more and more individuals began to invest in

mutual fund A mutual fund is an investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase Security (finance), securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV in ...

s instead of individual stocks. Retrieved on August 11, 2008. The term odd lot existed prior to use in finance and is used outside the financial industry for any irregular

packaging Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coo ...

in a general and objective sense.

References

{{Stock market Technical analysis Financial markets