Herd behaviour & investor sentiment: Evidence from UK mutual funds

The aims of this paper are to detect evidence of institutional investor herding behaviour and examine the role that investor sentiment plays in institutional investor herding behaviour. The herding behaviour is investigated by examining the dispersion of time varying beta of UK open-end and closed-end funds. The study finds evidence of fund managers' herding behaviour, which suggests they are likely to herd on market portfolio, size, and value factors. UK market-wide investor sentiment index is used for investigating the effects of investor sentiment on institutional herding behaviour. We find a unidirectional investor sentiment effect on the herding of UK mutual fund managers. We also reveal that the sentiment factors affecting UK open-end and closed-end fund managers herding behaviour are different due to the differences in fund structure.     

Herd mentality in the stock market: On the role of idiosyncratic participants with heterogeneous information

This paper examines herd behaviour using aggregate market data for stocks, with a focus on the role of idiosyncratic participants with heterogeneous information. We look at herding asymmetry between up and down markets, taking into consideration the daily price limits and the impact of the recent financial crisis. We also improve upon existing tests for fundamental and non-fundamental herding, as well as proposing a method for investigating herd behaviour of different groups of investors. Empirical evidence based on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in Vietnam reveals a greater level of herding on up compared to down market days, and a significant reduction in the magnitude of herding following the crisis. We document robust intentional herding even when unintentional (fundamental) herding is factored out. Our empirical results also uncover potential within-group herding and between-group interactions among arbitrageurs and noise traders in the market.     

Implicit incentives and reputational herding by hedge fund managers

Several theories of reputation suggest that managers' incentives affect their propensity to engage in herding behavior. This paper investigates these theories by tracking hedge fund managers' herding behavior over their careers. I first examine managerial incentives for herding, and show that more senior managers that deviate from the herd have a significantly higher probability of failure and do not experience higher fund inflows than their less-senior counterparts. These implicit incentives should encourage managers to herd more as their careers progress. I find strong support for this hypothesis: using a number of proxies for herding, I show that more experienced managers herd more than less-experienced managers. Finally, I examine performance differences between more and less-experienced managers, and find that while more experienced managers underperform less-experienced managers, this underperformance does not appear to be caused by differences in herding. Overall, these results are in direct contrast with studies of mutual fund managers, reflecting important difference in implicit incentives between the two industries.     

From COVID-19 herd immunity to investor herding in international stock markets: The role of government and regulatory restrictions

We study if government response to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic can mitigate investor herding behaviour in international stock markets. Our empirical analysis is informed by daily stock market data from 72 countries from both developed and emerging economies in the first quarter of 2020. The government response to the COVID-19 outbreak is measured by means of the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, where higher scores are associated with greater stringency. Three main findings are in order. First, results show evidence of investor herding in international stock markets. Second, we document that the Oxford Government Response Stringency Index mitigates investor herding behaviour, by way of reducing multidimensional uncertainty. Third, short-selling restrictions, temporarily imposed by the national and supranational regulatory authorities of the European Union, appear to exert a mitigating effect on herding. Finally, our results are robust to a range of model specifications.     

Together we invest? Individual and institutional investors' trading behaviour in Poland

This paper contributes to the debate about individual and institutional investors' trading behaviour with new evidence from the Polish stock market. While most existing studies focus on institutional investors' trading in developed markets, we test for the presence of herding during market up- and downswings on an emerging market. Our unique approach is to combine an established method relying on daily prices with institutional features of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It enables us to separate individuals from institutions by examining two trading mechanisms with different investor structures. The empirical results suggest that individuals engage in herding during market downswings, while there is less evidence of imitating trading behaviour in bullish markets. Regardless of the state of the market, institutions' trading behaviour does not appear to exhibit herd behaviour. Further evidence suggests that herding by individuals becomes less pronounced over time.     

Herding in the German Mutual Fund Industry

This paper analyses the trading activity of German mutual funds in the 1998–2002 period to investigate whether German mutual fund managers are engaged in herding behaviour. Another objective of the study is to determine the impact of this herd‐like trading on stock prices. Our results provide evidence of herding and positive feedback trading by German mutual fund managers. We show that a significant portion of herding detected in the German market is associated with spurious herding as a consequence of changes in benchmark index composition. Investigating the impact of mutual fund herding on stock prices, we find that herding seems to neither destabilise nor stabilise stock prices.     

Industry herding in crypto assets

The aim of this paper is to investigate if herd behaviour is present in crypto assets at industry level. Using price information extracted from coinmarketcap.com between 29 April 2013 and 9 May 2022, we find evidence of herding and reverse herding in the crypto assets market. Concentrated periods of herding and reverse herding are particularly evident in the January 2020–April 2022 Covid period. At industry level, herding is more profound in large sectors with higher volatility. In smaller sectors where ventures are backed by ‘real assets’, very short periods of herding with marginal significance are detected. Reverse herding is present in all industries except Real Estate between June 2021 and May 2022, implying that strategies such as excessive ‘flight to quality’ or/and token picking are at play during the recent crypto crash. We also detect varying asymmetric herding at industry level. This paper further examines the factors that drive such industry herding and reverse herding in the crypto assets market, and our results show that industry concentration and investor sentiments contribute to the probability of herding/reverse herding. Our study provides further insights to the forces that drive the dispersion in crypto assets prices and contribute to the behavioural studies of the crypto market.     

Deconstructing Herding: Evidence from Pension Fund Investment Behavior

In this paper, we examine herding across asset classes and industry levels. We also study what incentives managers at various layers of the financial industry face when investing. To do so, we use unique and detailed monthly portfolios between 1996 and 2005 from pension funds in Chile, a pioneer in pension-fund reform. The results show that pension funds herd more in assets that have more risk and for which pension funds have less market information. Furthermore, the results show that herding is more prevalent for funds that narrowly compete with each other, namely, when comparing funds of the same type across pension fund administrators (PFAs). There is much less herding across PFAs as a whole and in individual pension funds within PFAs. These herding patterns are consistent with incentives for managers to be close to industry benchmarks, and might be also driven by market forces and partly by regulation.     

The case for herding is stronger than you think

In this paper, we challenge the often implemented herding measure by Chang et al. (2000). They regress the cross-sectional absolute deviation of returns on the absolute and squared excess market return. A coefficient on the squared excess market return significantly smaller than zero is interpreted as evidence for herding. However, we show that the true coefficient is positive under the null hypothesis of no herding. Hence, their test is biased against finding evidence in favour of herding. Empirical examinations for the S&P 500 and the EuroStoxx 50 confirm the misleading implications of Chang, Cheng and Khorana’s measure, while our modified test provides clear-cut evidence for herding behaviour.     

Herding behaviour in P2P lending markets

We explore lender behaviour on Renrendai.com, a leading Chinese peer-to-peer (P2P) crowdlending platform. Using a sample of around five million investor-loan-hour observations, and applying a high-dimensional fixed effect estimator, we confirm evidence of herding behaviour: the investors in our sample prefer assets that had attracted strong interest in previous periods. The herding behaviour relates to both the experience level of the investor and the length of time of an investment session on the platform. We also provide evidence of significant herding behaviour in the first hour of experienced investors’ sessions. Our results are robust to the use of alternative specifications.     

Herding behaviour in the Australian loan market and its impact on bank loan quality

We examine the effect of herding behaviour on the credit quality of bank loans in Australia. We find that bank herding varies with different types of loans. It tends to be more prevalent in owner‐occupied housing loans and credit cards than other types of loans. During the global financial crisis period, herding in owner‐occupied housing loans was most pronounced due to the flight‐to‐quality phenomenon in the housing sector. Furthermore, we find that the big four banks tend to herd more than smaller and regional banks. Bank herding behaviour is countercyclical, as it is negatively related to real GDP growth and the cost of funding but is positively related to market risk. Regulatory capital requirements may also encourage herding as banks are required to hold less risk‐weighted capital for residential loans. Most importantly, bank herding is related to higher impaired assets and therefore lower loan quality. Our findings may have implications for policymakers and bank regulators.     

Assessing the accuracy and dispersion of real estate investment forecasts

Existing empirical evidence has frequently observed that professional forecasters are conservative and display herding behaviour. Whilst a large number of papers have considered equities as well as macroeconomic series, few have considered the accuracy of forecasts in alternative asset classes such as real estate. We consider the accuracy of forecasts for the UK commercial real estate market over the period 1999–2011. The results illustrate that forecasters display a tendency to under-estimate growth rates during strong market conditions and over-estimate when the market is performing poorly. This conservatism not only results in smoothed estimates but also implies that forecasters display herding behaviour. There is also a marked difference in the relative accuracy of capital and total returns versus rental figures. Whilst rental growth forecasts are relatively accurate, considerable inaccuracy is observed with respect to capital value and total returns.     

Short-selling bans and institutional investors' herding behaviour: Evidence from the global financial crisis

The literature on short-selling restrictions focusses mainly on a ban's impact on market efficiency, liquidity and overpricing. Surprisingly, little is known about the effects of short-sale constraints on herd behaviour. Since institutional investors have come to dominate mature stock markets and rely extensively on short sales, constraining these traders may influence the asset pricing process. We investigate six stock markets that faced bans during the recent global financial crisis. Our empirical evidence shows that short-selling restrictions exhibit either no influence on herding formation or induce adverse herding. This implies a higher dispersion of returns around the market compared to rational asset pricing, which can be interpreted as an increase in uncertainty among stock market investors.     

Herding and Feedback Trading by Institutional and Individual Investors

We document strong positive correlation between changes in institutional ownership and returns measured over the same period. The result suggests that either institutional investors positive-feedback trade more than individual investors or institutional herding impacts prices more than herding by individual investors. We find evidence that both factors play a role in explaining the relation. We find no evidence, however, of return mean-reversion in the year following large changes in institutional ownership—stocks institutional investors purchase subsequently outperform those they sell. Moreover, institutional herding is positively correlated with lag returns and appears to be related to stock return momentum.     

Bond market investor herding: Evidence from the European financial crisis

During the recent financial crisis, numerous EU officials, market participants and the media suggested that irrational herding was a key factor for the financial turmoil and the soaring yield spreads. In this paper we test for evidence of herd behavior in European government bond prices and, overall, we find no evidence of investor herding either before or after the EU crisis. We do find, however, in an original contribution to the bond market literature, strong evidence that during the EU crisis period, macroeconomic information announcements induced bond market investor herding; a finding that confirms the notion of ‘spurious’ herding proposed by Bikhchandani and Sharma (2001) for bond markets. Further tests reinforce this finding and also indicate the existence of herding spill-over effects.     

Mutual Funds and Bubbles: The Surprising Role of Contractual Incentives

This article studies one of the potential causes of the financialmarket bubble of the late 1990s: the herding behavior of mutualfunds. We show that the incentives contained in the mutual funds'advisory contracts induce managers to overcome their tendencyto herd. We argue that investing in bubble stocks amounts toherding and contracts with high incentives induce managers todiverge from the herd, thus reducing their holding of bubblestocks. The differential exposure to bubble stocks significantlyimpacted the funds' performance both in the period prior toMarch 2000, as well as afterwards.     

An empirical evaluation of analysts’ herding behavior following Regulation Fair Disclosure

This study examines whether analysts’ forecasts exhibited increased herding behavior following the adoption of Regulation Fair Disclosure. A recent model by Arya et al. [Arya, A., Glover, J., Mittendorf, B., Narayanamoorthy, G., 2005. Unintended consequences of regulating disclosures: The case of Regulation Fair Disclosure. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 24 (3), 243–252], using a discrete-time information cascade-based model, projects that one potential consequence of Regulation Fair Disclosure might be increased herding by financial analysts, although previous studies examining the economic consequences of Regulation FD have generally not found any averse consequence for investors. We examine financial analysts forecasting behavior before and after the adoption of Regulation FD in order to determine if such herding of forecasts occurred empirically. Our general finding is that increased herding behavior cannot be detected among either the firms most directly impacted by Regulation FD (those which used to hold closed press conferences), or those least affected (i.e., firms that used to either hold open or no press conferences). However, because analysts face diverse incentives for engaging in either herding or anti-herding behavior, our results are not interpretable as an empirical test of the Arya et al. (2005) theoretical model.     

Market sentiment: a key factor of investors’ imitative behaviour

The aim of this paper is to explore herding behaviour among investors to determine its rational and emotional component factors and identify relationships among them. We apply causality tests to evaluate the impact of return and market sentiment on herding intensity. The herding intensity is quantified using the measure developed by Patterson and Sharma (2006) . The research was conducted during the period 1997–2003 in the Spanish stock market, where the presence of herding has been confirmed. The results reveal that the herding intensity depends on past returns and sentiment or subjective assessments and confirm the presence of both a rational and an emotional factor.     

Fund managers' herding and the sensitivity of fund flows to past performance

This study provides a new explanation for the weak sensitivity of investors' flows to poor fund performance based on fund managers' incentives to herd from career concerns. We show that a manager's decision to trade with (against) the herd decreases (increases) significantly investors' willingness to redeem capital from underperforming funds. We argue that this differential investor reaction to poor performance conditional on herding explains the lower termination risk identified among herding managers. We also find that financial intermediaries do not mitigate this sub-optimal investors' response. Our findings support the view that underperforming funds can retain larger payoffs if they herd.     

Herding behavior in asset markets

This paper examines the origins of herding behavior in asset markets and its potential to produce a price bubble. I present a model which explains the emergence and the development of herding behavior via asymmetric information and Baysian learning. A corresponding price bubble is explained through herding behavior without assuming any speculative incentives on the part of the investors.