Investor sentiment and return predictability of disagreement

This study examines the influence of investor sentiment on the relationship between disagreement among investors and future stock market returns. We find that the relationship between disagreement and future stock market returns time-varies with the degree of investor sentiment. Higher disagreement among investors’ opinions predicts significantly lower future stock market returns during high-sentiment periods, but it has no significant effect on future stock market returns during low-sentiment periods. Our findings imply that investor sentiment is related to several causes of short-sale impediments suggested in the previous literature on investor sentiment, and that the stock return predictability of disagreement is driven by investor sentiment. We demonstrate that investor sentiment has a significant impact on the stock market return predictability of disagreement through in-sample and out-of-sample analyses. In addition, the profitability of our suggested trading strategy exploiting disagreement and investor sentiment level confirms the economic significance of incorporating investor sentiment into the relationship between disagreement among investors and future stock market returns.     

Sentiment stocks

To study how investor sentiment at the firm level affects stock returns, we match more than 58 million social media messages in China with listed firms and construct a measure of individual stock sentiment based on the tone of those messages. We document that positive investor sentiment predicts higher stock risk-adjusted returns in the very short term followed by price reversals. This association between stock sentiment and stock returns is not explained by observable stock characteristics, unobservable time-invariant characteristics, market-wide sentiment, overreaction to news, or changing investor attention. Consistent with theories of investor sentiment, we find that the link between sentiment and stock returns is mainly driven by positive sentiment and non-professional investors. Finally, exploiting a unique feature of the Chinese stock market, we are able to isolate the causal effect of sentiment on stock returns from confounding factors.     

Intraday online investor sentiment and return patterns in the U.S. stock market

We implement a novel approach to derive investor sentiment from messages posted on social media before we explore the relation between online investor sentiment and intraday stock returns. Using an extensive dataset of messages posted on the microblogging platform StockTwits, we construct a lexicon of words used by online investors when they share opinions and ideas about the bullishness or the bearishness of the stock market. We demonstrate that a transparent and replicable approach significantly outperforms standard dictionary-based methods used in the literature while remaining competitive with more complex machine learning algorithms. Aggregating individual message sentiment at half-hour intervals, we provide empirical evidence that online investor sentiment helps forecast intraday stock index returns. After controlling for past market returns, we find that the first half-hour change in investor sentiment predicts the last half-hour S&P 500 index ETF return. Examining users’ self-reported investment approach, holding period and experience level, we find that the intraday sentiment effect is driven by the shift in the sentiment of novice traders. Overall, our results provide direct empirical evidence of sentiment-driven noise trading at the intraday level.     

投资者情绪是导致我国投资者对市场信息出现反应偏差的原因吗：基于贝叶斯分位数回归模型的研究

本文使用贝叶斯分位数回归模型实证分析包含投资者情绪的投资者最优选择模型,结果表明：投资者情绪对于股票收益率存在非线性的正向影响,这是造成投资者对于市场信息出现反应偏差的一个重要原因.同时,市场信息和投资者情绪指标对于我国股票收益率都有着较大的影响作用;当股票出现不同涨跌幅时,市场信息对于股票收益率的影响有着较大的差异性.而考虑了投资者情绪指标之后,投资者对于市场信息的反应偏差明显减小,说明投资者情绪是造成我国投资者对于市场信息出现过度反应和反应不足的重要原因.我国投资者应该树立起良好的投资意识和心态,避免潜在的投资损失.     

Information uncertainty,investor sentiment,and analyst reports

This study investigates the relationships among information uncertainty, investor sentiment, analyst reports, and stock returns in a unified framework. The effects of analyst reports on stock returns depend on the degrees of information uncertainty, indicating that recommendation upgrades (downgrades) convey more valuable positive (negative) information under higher information uncertainty. Such stock market reactions are significantly explained by investor sentiment when information uncertainty is high. Our empirical findings are robust to changes in abnormal return measures and information uncertainty proxies.     

Investor Sentiment and the Closed‐end Fund Puzzle: Out‐of‐sample Evidence

In this paper we examine the proposition that small investor sentiment, measured by the change in the discount/premium on closed‐end funds, is an important factor in stock returns. We conduct an out‐of‐sample test of the investor sentiment hypothesis in a market environment that is more likely to be prone to investor sentiment than the USA. We fail to provide supporting evidence for the claim of Lee et al. (1991) that investor sentiment affects the risk of common stocks. Consistent with Elton et al. (1998) , who show that investor sentiment does not enter the return generating process, our tests do not detect investor sentiment in a capital market that is more susceptible to small investor sentiment. Our results provide additional support against the claim that investor sentiment represents an independent and systematic asset pricing risk.     

Time-variation in the impact of news sentiment

Utilizing firm-specific news sentiment data provided by Thomson Reuters News Analytics, I construct aggregate measures to examine the relationship between news sentiment and stock market returns over the period 2004–2010. I find a highly significant relationship between aggregated measures of news sentiment and stock returns that fluctuates over time and by industry. I identify a link between the time-variation of news sentiment impact and industry beta, and determine that levels of investor sentiment (proxied by VIX) play an important role in explaining this variation.     

Investor Sentiment and Return Predictability of the Option to Stock Volume Ratio

We study the effect of investor sentiment on the relation between the option to stock volume ratio (O/S) and future stock returns. Relative option volume has return predictability under short sale constraints. For this reason, we expect and find a stronger O/S‐return relation during high sentiment periods than during low sentiment periods. We find that Baker and Wurgler's Investor Sentiment Index affects the O/S‐return relation after controlling for consumer sentiment indices and economic environment factors. While prior studies have used consumer sentiment indices as alternative measures of investor sentiment, our results suggest these effects are distinct.     

Investor sentiment and stock returns: Some international evidence

We examine whether consumer confidence – as a proxy for individual investor sentiment – affects expected stock returns internationally in 18 industrialized countries. In line with recent evidence for the U.S., we find that sentiment negatively forecasts aggregate stock market returns on average across countries. When sentiment is high, future stock returns tend to be lower and vice versa. This relation also holds for returns of value stocks, growth stocks, small stocks, and for different forecasting horizons. Finally, we employ a cross-sectional perspective and provide evidence that the impact of sentiment on stock returns is higher for countries which have less market integrity and which are culturally more prone to herd-like behavior and overreaction.     

Investor sentiment and stock returns: Global evidence

We assess the impact of investor sentiment on future stock returns in 50 global stock markets. Using the consumer confidence index (CCI) as the sentiment proxy, we document a negative relationship between investor sentiment and future stock returns at the global level. While the separation between developed and emerging markets does not disrupt the negative pattern, investor sentiment has a more instant impact in emerging markets, but a more enduring impact in developed markets. Individual stock markets reveal heterogeneity in the sentiment-return relationship. This heterogeneity can be explained by cross-market differences in culture and institutions, along with intelligence and education, to varying degrees influenced by the extent of individual investor market participation.     

Investor Sentiment and Stock Returns: Evidence from Turkey

This paper investigates the relation between investor sentiment and stock returns on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, employing vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis and Granger causality tests. The sample period extends from July 1997 to June 2005. In the VAR models, stock portfolio returns and investor sentiment proxies are used as endogenous variables. Two dummy variables accounting for natural and economic crises are used as exogenous variables. The analysis results suggest that, excepting shares of equity issues in aggregate issues, stock portfolio returns seem to affect all investor sentiment proxies, namely closed-end fund discount, mutual fund flows, odd-lot sales-to-purchases ratio, and repo holdings of mutual funds. Investor sentiment does not appear to forecast future stock returns; only the turnover ratio of the stock market seems to have forecasting potential.     

Investor Trading Behavior and Sentiment in Futures Markets

This study investigates the effects of investor trading behavior and investor sentiment on futures market return. We find that the spot investor trading behavior, futures investor trading behavior, spot market sentiment, and futures market sentiment all have positive effects on daily futures returns in Chinese financial market. More importantly, we show that the effect of (spot) futures investor trading behavior has better explanatory power than (spot) futures market sentiment on futures returns. Further supporting our results, high investor trading behavior and high investor sentiment strengthen the positive relation between sentiment-returns and behavior-returns.     

Investor sentiment and the dispersion of stock returns: Evidence based on the social network of investors

This paper extracts an investor sentiment indicator for the 30 DJIA stocks based on the textual classification of 289,024 online tweets posted on the so-called StockTwits, and examines its contemporaneous and predictability effects on the dispersion of stock returns using the quantile regression technique. We find that both contemporaneous and predictability effects of sentiment are heterogeneous throughout the return distribution. Specifically, sentiment is positively contemporaneously associated with stock returns at higher quantiles. However, it is a strong negative predictor of future returns at lower quantiles. Overall, our findings are broadly consistent with most behavioural theories and show that sentiment mainly affects the valuation of assets in extreme market conditions.     

Does Investor Sentiment Affect the Value Relevance of Accounting Information?

We investigate whether investor sentiment affects the relationships between accounting variables and contemporaneous stock returns. Using price-relevant accounting variables identified by Chen and Zhang (2007) and the investor sentiment index constructed by Baker and Wurgler (2006), we find that the value relevance of accounting variables is collectively lower in high sentiment periods than in low sentiment periods. More importantly, earnings yield appears to be more related to contemporaneous stock returns in high sentiment periods, while other accounting variables are more related to stock returns in low sentiment periods. The effect of investor sentiment on the value relevance of accounting information is stronger for firms that are more difficult to value and to arbitrage.     

Investor sentiment and stock returns: Wenchuan Earthquake

This paper exploits a natural experiment (the Wenchuan Earthquake in China) to study the effects of investor sentiment on stock returns. We find that during the 12 months following the earthquake, stock returns are significantly lower for firms headquartered nearer the epicenter than for firms further away. Further analyses indicate that this pattern of stock returns does not exist before or long after the earthquake, and cannot be explained by actual economic losses or a change in systematic risk. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the interaction of local bias and investor sentiment affecting stock returns.     

Investor sentiment indices based on k-step PLS algorithm: A group of powerful predictors of stock market returns

We construct a group of new investor sentiment indices by applying a new dimension reduction technique called k-step algorithm which adopts partial least squares method recursively. With the purpose of forecasting the aggregate stock market return, the new group of investor sentiment indices performs a greater ability in predicting the market return than existing investor sentiment indices in and out of sample by adequately using the information in residuals and eliminating a common noise component in sentiment proxies. This group of new investor sentiment indices beats five widely used economic variables and still has a strong return predictability after controlling these variables. Moreover, they could also predict cross-sectional stock returns sorted by industry, size, value, and momentum and generate considerable economic value for a mean-variance investor. We find the predictability of this group of investor sentiment indices comes from its forecasting power for discount rates and market illiquidity.     

Is VIX an investor fear gauge in BRIC equity markets?

This study examines the intertemporal relationships between CBOE market volatility index (VIX) and stock market returns in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC), and between VIX and U.S. stock market returns, to uncover if VIX serves as an investor fear gauge in BRIC and U.S. markets. We conduct the VIX-returns analysis for the 1993–2007 period.Our results suggest a strong negative contemporaneous relation between daily changes (innovations) in VIX and U.S. stock market returns. This relation is stronger when VIX is higher and more volatile. A significant negative contemporaneous relation between VIX and equity returns also exists for China and Brazil during 1993–2007 and for India during 1993–1997. Similar to the U.S. market, the immediate negative relation between the Brazilian stock returns and VIX changes is much stronger when VIX is both high and more volatile. Our results also indicate a strong asymmetric relation between innovations in VIX and daily stock market returns in U.S., Brazil, and China, suggesting that VIX is more of a gauge of investor fear than investor positive sentiment. However, the asymmetric relationship between stock market returns and VIX is much weaker when VIX is large and more volatile. These results have potential implications for portfolio diversification and for stock market and option trading timing in the equity markets of Brazil, India, and China. Overall, our results indicate that VIX is not only an investor fear gauge for the U.S. stock market but also for the equity markets of China, Brazil, and India.     

How Does the Change in Investor Sentiment over Time Affect Stock Returns?

We examine how the change in investor sentiment (IS) over time (the IS trend) affects stock returns. The turnover rates of trading shares, trading value, and transactions, three market measures of trading activity, have been demonstrated to meet the psychometric criteria for measuring the IS trend. The ratio of market price to book value and the short-selling turnover ratio are inappropriate proxies. The empirical results indicate that the influence of the IS trend on returns depends on the direction of the trend (optimistic or pessimistic) and stock characteristics of individual holdings and on arbitrage constraint. The effectiveness of arbitrage, sentiment-driven mispricing, and market intervention are discussed.     

Investor sentiment and firm capital structure

We provide novel evidence of the role of investor sentiment in determining firms' capital structure decisions from three perspectives: leverage ratio, debt maturity and leverage target adjustment. We find that when investor sentiment is high, firms increase their leverage ratios, supporting our contention that high investor sentiment increases firms' debt capacity and facilitates the use of an aggressive leverage policy. Debt maturity is shorter in high sentiment periods, implying that firms are confident about future earnings and use shorter debt maturity to signal their financial solvency. Leverage target adjustment is slower in low sentiment periods, indicating higher costs of external finance. Furthermore, the sentiment-leverage relationship sensitivity is greater for financially constrained firms. Our extended analysis determines that leverage-increasing firms generate lower stock returns subsequent to a period of high sentiment, offering practical insights into the economic consequences of increasing leverage in high sentiment periods on corporate value for investors. Our research advances the understanding of the impact of investor sentiment on firms' financing decisions and stock returns.     

How Does Investor Sentiment Affect Stock Market Crises? Evidence from Panel Data

We test the impact of investor sentiment on a panel of international stock markets. Specifically, we examine the influence of investor sentiment on the probability of stock market crises. We find that investor sentiment increases the probability of occurrence of stock market crises within a one‐year horizon. The impact of investor sentiment on stock markets is more pronounced in countries that are culturally more prone to herd‐like behavior, overreaction and low institutional involvement.