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.     

投资者情绪与中国股票市场过度波动

本文分析中国投资者分类情绪及信心变化与中国股票市场波动的同期及动态影响。实证结果表明:就同期而言,中国投资者对国内经济基本面的信心变化以及中国股票市场波动,将影响投资者对国际经济金融环境的信心;就中长期而言,中国投资者情绪中关于国内经济基本面和国内经济政策的信心变化是影响中国股票市场过度波动的重要原因;中国投资者关于国际经济金融环境的信心深受国内经济基本面的信心变化的影响,中国投资者对A股市场估值的判断,受投资者对A股市场的股票估值信心以及国内经济基本面信心变化影响较大。     

Investor Sentiment,Trading Behavior and Informational Efficiency in Index Futures Markets

This paper shows that traders in index futures markets are positive feedback traders—they buy when prices increase and sell when prices decline. Positive feedback trading appears to be more active in periods of high investor sentiment. This finding is consistent with the notion that feedback trading is driven by expectations of noise traders. Consistent with the noise trading hypothesis, order flow in index futures markets is less informative when investors are optimistic. Transitory volatility measured at high frequencies also appears to decline in periods of bullish sentiment, suggesting that sentiment‐driven trading increases market liquidity.     

本地偏好、投资者情绪与股票收益率:来自网络论坛的经验证据

本文以投资者在东方财富网股吧针对创业板上市公司发表的90多万条帖子为研究对象,通过IP地址识别,构建本地关注指标;并利用计算机文本挖掘技术,提取网络发帖所体现的情绪倾向,构建投资者情绪指标。实证结果显示,本地关注对股票收益率的影响取决于投资者情绪,当投资者持积极情绪时,本地关注对股票收益率有显著的正向影响;当投资者持消极情绪时,该影响显著为负。在积极情绪和消极情绪下本地关注对股票交易量都有显著正向影响,但积极情绪下的影响程度比消极情绪下更大。此外,本地关注与投资者情绪的交叉效应在上市公司样本数量较多的北京、广东、江苏、上海、浙江这五个区域都存在,并与整体样本的特征基本一致,但在样本数量较少的其他区域并不完全一致。     

Sentiment Metrics and Investor Demand

Recent work suggests that sentiment traders shift from safer to more speculative stocks when sentiment increases. Exploiting these cross‐sectional patterns and changes in share ownership, we find that sentiment metrics capture institutional rather than individual investors’ demand shocks. We investigate the underlying economic mechanisms and find that common institutional investment styles (e.g., risk management, momentum trading) explain a significant portion of the relation between institutions and sentiment.     

Investor Sentiment and Option Prices

This paper examines whether investor sentiment about the stockmarket affects prices of the S&P 500 options. The findingsreveal that the index option volatility smile is steeper (flatter)and the risk-neutral skewness of monthly index return is more(less) negative when market sentiment becomes more bearish (bullish).These significant relations are robust and become stronger whenthere are more impediments to arbitrage in index options. Theycannot be explained by rational perfect-market-based optionpricing models. Changes in investor sentiment help explain timevariation in the slope of index option smile and risk-neutralskewness beyond factors suggested by the current models.     

Investor Sentiment and REIT Returns

Recent advances in the field of behavioral finance have given a fillip to the use of behavioral factors in asset pricing models. This study adds to the understanding of the REIT return generating process by exploring the behavioral impact of investor sentiment on REIT returns. The results show that when investors are optimistic (pessimistic), REIT returns become higher (lower). These findings are robust when conventional control variables are considered. Empirical analysis indicates steady erosion in the importance of the default and term structure interest rate variables previously considered as important determinants of REIT returns. Previous noise trading papers that consider the impact of institutional traders conclude that institutional investors cannot arbitrage away noise trader risk. The results of this paper find an exception in the case of small REITs. Examination of REITs based on size reveals that the return generating process of small REITs differs from that of mid-size and large REITs. Analysis of the return generating process by performance shows high performance REITs are more sensitive to the independent variables in the model as compared to the low and mid performance REITs.     

Investor Sentiment and Corporate Disclosure

This paper investigates how firms react strategically to investor sentiment via their disclosure policies in an attempt to influence the sentiment‐induced biases in expectations. Proxying for sentiment using the Michigan Consumer Confidence Index, we show that during low‐sentiment periods, managers increase forecasts to “walk up” current estimates of future earnings over long horizons. In contrast, during periods of high sentiment, managers reduce their long‐horizon forecasting activity. Further, while there is an association between sentiment and the biases in analysts' estimates of future earnings, management disclosures vary with sentiment even after controlling for analyst pessimism, indicating that managers attempt to communicate with investors at large, and not just analysts. Our study provides evidence that firms' long‐horizon disclosure choices reflect managers' desire to maintain optimistic earnings valuations.     

Retail Investor Sentiment and Return Comovements

Using a database of more than 1.85 million retail investor transactions over 1991–1996, we show that these trades are systematically correlated—that is, individuals buy (or sell) stocks in concert. Moreover, consistent with noise trader models, we find that systematic retail trading explains return comovements for stocks with high retail concentration (i.e., small‐cap, value, lower institutional ownership, and lower‐priced stocks), especially if these stocks are also costly to arbitrage. Macroeconomic news and analyst earnings forecast revisions do not explain these results. Collectively, our findings support a role for investor sentiment in the formation of returns.     

Positive Feedback Trading and Investor Sentiment

This article examines how investor sentiment affects positive feedback trading behavior. By analyzing the daily closing total return of CSI 300 index and its individual returns of stocks, we find that relatively high or low sentiment induces active positive feedback trading. With a specific indicator of sentiment, we explain the microstructure setting of the relationship between positive feedback trading and sentiment. We adopt the classical feedback model from Sentana and Wadhwani (1992) to measure positive feedback trading behavior. By adding sentiment factor to the model, we successfully explain how sentiment influences the behavior of both feedback traders and rational investors. The empirical findings suggest that positive feedback traders are more likely to trade when the prices of most securities move forward together. When the sentiment of feedback traders is at an intermediate level, the feedback trading behavior is insignificant.     

Market Response to Investor Sentiment

This paper reconsiders the effect of investor sentiment on stock prices. Our main contribution is that, in addition to the intermediate term return predictability, we also analyze the immediate price reaction to the publication of survey‐based investor sentiment indicators. We find that the sign of the immediate market response is the same as that of the predictability at intermediate time horizons. This is consistent with underreaction to cash flow news or with investor sentiment being related to mispricing. It is inconsistent with the alternative explanations of a rational response to cash flow news or sentiment indicators providing information about future expected returns.     

Investor Sentiment and the Closed-End Fund Puzzle

This paper examines the proposition that fluctuations in discounts of closed-end funds are driven by changes in individual investor sentiment. The theory implies that discounts on various funds move together, that new funds get started when seasoned funds sell at a premium or a small discount, and that discounts are correlated with prices of other securities affected by the same investor sentiment. The evidence supports these predictions. In particular, we find that both closed-end funds and small stocks tend to be held by individual investors, and that the discounts on closed-end funds narrow when small stocks do well.     

Investor Sentiment and Pro Forma Earnings Disclosures

We examine the influence of investor sentiment on managers’ discretionary disclosure of “pro forma” (adjusted) earnings metrics in earnings press releases. We find that managers’ propensity to disclose an adjusted earnings metric (especially one that exceeds the GAAP earnings number) increases with the level of investor sentiment. Furthermore, our analyses suggest that, as investor sentiment increases, managers: (1) exclude higher levels of both recurring and nonrecurring expenses in calculating the pro forma earnings number and (2) emphasize the pro forma figure by placing it more prominently within the earnings press release. Additional analyses indicate that the association between investor sentiment and managers’ pro forma disclosure decisions at least partly reflects opportunistic motives. Finally, we find that managers’ own sentiment‐driven expectations also play a role in their pro forma disclosure decisions.     

投资者情绪、风险承担与股票收益

本文从整体投资者情绪和投资者情绪分歧两个维度,考察投资者情绪截面特征对股票定价的影响,并探究投资者情绪对股票定价的影响机制。一方面,分别使用投资者情绪横截面均值和方差表征整体投资者情绪和投资者情绪分歧,并构建同时包含整体投资者情绪和投资者情绪分歧的资产定价模型。另一方面,使用沪深A股上市公司2007—2020年面板数据,实证检验上述理论模型的结论。理论和实证研究表明,整体投资者情绪和投资者情绪分歧均显著正向影响股票收益,两者的交互作用负向影响股票收益;整体投资者情绪和投资者情绪分歧均显著提高风险承担水平,而风险承担水平的提高会增加股票收益,即风险承担在投资者情绪对股票收益的影响中起到了中介作用。     

Overconfidence,Investor Sentiment,and Evolution

We examine the survival of nonrational investors in an evolutionary game model with a population dynamic for a large economy. The dynamic indicates that the growth rate of wealth accumulation drives the evolutionary process. We focus our analysis on the survival of overconfidence and investor sentiment. We find that underconfidence or pessimism cannot survive, but moderate overconfidence or optimism can survive and even dominate, particularly when the fundamental risk is large. These findings provide new empirical implications for the survivability of active fund management. Our results lend support to the relevance of the psychology of investors in studying financial markets. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: G10, G14.     

Investor Sentiment and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

We study how investor sentiment affects the cross‐section of stock returns. We predict that a wave of investor sentiment has larger effects on securities whose valuations are highly subjective and difficult to arbitrage. Consistent with this prediction, we find that when beginning‐of‐period proxies for sentiment are low, subsequent returns are relatively high for small stocks, young stocks, high volatility stocks, unprofitable stocks, non‐dividend‐paying stocks, extreme growth stocks, and distressed stocks. When sentiment is high, on the other hand, these categories of stock earn relatively low subsequent returns.     

投资者情绪、宏观经济变量及股票市场的关系研究

选取2010年7月至2017年7月沪深300指数、5个投资者情绪代理变量、11个宏观经济变量的月度数据,首先通过主成分分析法构造出投资者情绪因子、经济增长因子和货币因子,然后采用VAR模型研究了这三个因子与沪深300指数之间的关系,结果发现:沪深300指数除了受其自身滞后项的影响,投资者情绪也起到了较强的正向作用;投资者情绪则主要受到了沪深300指数和货币因子的影响,且沪深300指数从第4期开始成为最重要的因素;经济增长因子主要受自身影响;而货币因子除了受自身影响外,经济增长因子也起着较大的作用。     

媒体语气、投资者情绪与IPO定价

本文利用IPO公司在上市前不同时间段内主流财经媒体报道中的正负面词汇数据,构建了媒体语气这一度量公司层面投资者情绪的代理变量,从个股层面检验投资者情绪对IPO抑价率的影响。本文研究结果表明,相比正面媒体语气,负面媒体语气能够更好地解释IPO抑价率、首日换手率以及超募比例。具体而言,我们发现负面媒体语气与IPO抑价率、IPO超募资金比例以及承销商费用占比均显著负相关:负面语气每下降1%,IPO抑价率上升0.22%,超募资金比例提高0.13%,承销商费用占比上升1.44%。我们进一步发现发行公司和承销商有动机和激励通过媒体推介IPO公司,引导、煽动投资者情绪,从而厘清投资者情绪的影响因素以及其作用于资产价格的渠道。本文最后验证了媒体语气作为投资者情绪代理变量的可靠性。     

投资者情绪、经理激励契约与企业投资

本文基于中国上市公司经理激励契约安排的制度背景,把经理激励契约纳入投资者非理性分析框架,就投资者情绪与经理激励契约如何相互作用影响企业投资进行了理论分析,并进行了实证检验。结果发现,高管持股会诱发高管利用投机的股市进行过度投资,而与股价弱相关的货币薪酬没有这种作用,而且经理薪酬的这种作用因企业实际控制人性质不同而有所差异。本研究表明高管持股在企业投资决策中具有负面的公司治理效应。