Do online searches actually measure future retail investor trades?

Using the total daily amount traded exclusively by retail investors in the Brazilian stock market from 2018 to 2020, we find that online searches exhibit a strong association with the future trades of retail investors and that this relationship is observable under different market conditions. Moreover, we also document that the alternative approaches commonly used in the literature to capture investor attention with online searches, such as tickers versus company names, market index attention versus aggregated individual stock attention, or log-differences versus abnormal log-differences of search volumes, are all consistent measures to capture future investor trades. Overall, our findings strongly support the view that online searches are a coherent proxy for the presence of retail investors in the stock market.     

Transparency,Liquidity, and Valuation: International Evidence on When Transparency Matters Most

We examine the relation between firm‐level transparency, stock market liquidity, and valuation across countries, focusing on whether the relation varies with a firm's characteristics and economic environment. We document lower transaction costs and greater liquidity (as measured by lower bid‐ask spreads and fewer zero‐return days) for firms with greater transparency (as measured by less evidence of earnings management, better accounting standards, higher quality auditors, more analyst following, and more accurate analyst forecasts). The relation between transparency and liquidity is more pronounced in periods of high volatility, when investor protection, disclosure requirements, and media penetration are poor, and when ownership is more concentrated, suggesting that firm‐level transparency matters more when overall investor uncertainty is greater. Increased liquidity is associated with lower implied cost of capital and with higher valuation as measured by Tobin's Q. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that liquidity is a significant channel through which transparency affects firm valuation and equity cost of capital.     

Does Noninformative Text Affect Investor Behavior?

This article demonstrates that easily processed texts affect investor trading behavior even in the absence of any informational content. We examine the trading symbols of US firms and find that stocks with clever tickers (those that are actual words in the English language) are more liquid, as measured by higher turnover and trading volume, as well as lower spreads. Furthermore, clever ticker stocks are traded more by uninformed investors and have larger market reactions on earnings announcement days. These results suggest that ticker fluency facilitates trading by improving the firm's visibility among retail investors through attention grabbing and memorization.     

Agency Conflicts, Investment, and Asset Pricing

The separation of ownership and control allows controlling shareholders to pursue private benefits. We develop an analytically tractable dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to study asset pricing and welfare implications of imperfect investor protection. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that countries with weaker investor protection have more incentives to overinvest, lower Tobin's q, higher return volatility, larger risk premia, and higher interest rate. Calibrating the model to the Korean economy reveals that perfecting investor protection increases the stock market's value by 22%, a gain for which outside shareholders are willing to pay 11% of their capital stock.     

Does Investor Sentiment Affect Earnings Management?

I hypothesize and find that earnings management via accruals is driven partially by the prevailing market‐wide investor sentiment. Managers inflate earnings in periods of higher sentiment, but report more conservatively during periods of low sentiment. Moreover, the likelihood of income‐increasing earnings management to avoid negative earnings surprises is also positively associated with investor sentiment. These results are robust to: (i) controls for time‐varying firm characteristics such as growth, investment opportunity sets, future profitability, leverage and size; (ii) macroeconomic variables such as future inflation, GDP growth, and growth in industrial production; (iii) multiple proxies for investor sentiment; and (iv) discretionary revenues as alternative measure of earnings management. Cross‐sectional analyses reveal that firms whose stock returns co‐move more with investor sentiment are more (less) likely to manage earnings upward via abnormal accruals in quarters of higher (lower) sentiment. The findings of managers’ strategic use of abnormal accruals show the need for increased attention from boards of directors, auditors and regulators to heightened managerial incentives to overstate earnings and to report optimistic earnings numbers during periods of high investor sentiment.     

Investor Protection and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Worldwide CEO Turnover

Recent research asserts that an essential feature of good corporate governance is strong investor protection, where investor protection is defined as the extent of the laws that protect investors' rights and the strength of the legal institutions that facilitate law enforcement. The purpose of this study is to test this assertion by investigating whether these measures of investor protection are associated with an important role of good corporate governance: identifying and terminating poorly performing CEOs. Our tests indicate that strong law enforcement institutions significantly improve the association between CEO turnover and poor performance, whereas extensive investor protection laws do not. In addition, we find that in countries with strong law enforcement, CEO turnover is more likely to be associated with poor stock returns when stock prices are more informative. Finding that strong law enforcement institutions are associated with improved CEO turnover‐performance sensitivity is consistent with good corporate governance requiring law enforcement institutions capable of protecting shareholders' property rights (i.e., protecting shareholders from expropriation by insiders). Finding that investor  protection laws are not associated with improved CEO turnover‐performance sensitivity is open to several explanations. For example, investor protection laws may not be as important as strong law enforcement in fostering good governance, the set of laws we examine may not be the set that are most important in promoting good governance, or measurement error in our surrogate for extensive investor protection laws may reduce the power of our test of this variable.     

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 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.     

European Momentum Strategies,Information Diffusion,and Investor Conservatism

In this paper we conduct an out‐of‐sample test of two behavioural theories that have been proposed to explain momentum in stock returns. We test the gradual‐information‐diffusion model of Hong and Stein (1999) and the investor conservatism bias model of Barberis et al. (1998) in a sample of 13 European stock markets during the period 1988 to 2001. These two models predict that momentum comes from the (i) gradual dissemination of firm‐specific information and (ii) investors’ failure to update their beliefs sufficiently when they observe new public information. The findings of this study are consistent with the predictions of the behavioural models of Hong and Stein's (1999) and Barberis et al. (1998) . The evidence shows that momentum is the result of the gradual diffusion of private information and investors’ psychological conservatism reflected on the systematic errors they make in forming earnings expectations by not updating them adequately relative to their prior beliefs and by undervaluing the statistical weight of new information.     

Types of investor uncertainty and the cost of equity capital

We jointly test the effects of two types of investor uncertainty, one related to future firm performance and unrelated to accruals (cash flow uncertainty) and one directly related to accrual estimation errors (accounting quality uncertainty). Distinct from prior studies, our uncertainty estimates are based on a matched‐firm design that minimizes the mechanical relationship between the two uncertainty variables. We find a strong negative relationship between cash flow uncertainty and multiple estimates of the cost of equity capital. With respect to accounting quality uncertainty, we find a strong positive association with both expected stock returns and implied costs of equity, but only in settings that control for cash flow uncertainty. Collectively, our results suggest the need to consider different types of investor uncertainty when examining how investor uncertainty affects the cost of equity capital.     

Investor Conferences,Firm Visibility,and Stock Liquidity

We examine the influence of investor conferences on firms’ stock liquidity. We find that firms participating in conferences experience a 1.4% to 2.8% increase in stock liquidity compared to nonconference firms. Consistent with investor conferences improving firm visibility, the increase in liquidity is larger for firms with low pre‐conference visibility and varies predictably with conference characteristics that affect the ability of investors to revise their beliefs about the firm. However, for firms with a large investor base and high visibility, conference participation is associated with a decline in stock liquidity, consistent with investor conferences exacerbating the information asymmetry among investors.     

中国个人投资者处置效应研究——一个非理性信念的视角

处置效应是指投资者过早卖出盈利股票而长期持有亏损股票的现象。大量文献表明金融市场投资者存在显著的处置效应,但其产生的原因和机理存在争议。本文在前景理论框架下,构建了包含投资者非理性预期的离散时间投资组合决策模型,发现处置效应随投资者情绪升高而减弱。本文使用我国某券商2007—2009年近177万个人投资者股票账户的交易数据进行了实证分析,得到与理论模型预测的一致结果,即投资者情绪与投资者处置效应之间呈现显著的负相关关系。而且,受情绪影响,投资者处置效应在估值难度较大的股票中更弱。本文结论对理解投资者处置效应、优化投资者卖出决策和加强资本市场基础制度建设具有一定理论和实践意义。     

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.     

Is the Aggregate Investor Reluctant to Realise Losses? Evidence from Taiwan

We ask whether the typical investor and the aggregate investor exhibit a bias known as the disposition effect, the tendency to sell investments that are held for a profit at a faster rate than investments held for a loss. We analyse all trading activity on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) for the five years ending in 1999. Using a dataset that contains all trades (over one billion) and the identity of every trader (nearly four million), we find that in aggregate, investors in Taiwan are about twice as likely to sell a stock if they are holding that stock for a gain rather than a loss. Eighty‐four percent of all Taiwanese investors sell winners at a faster rate than losers. Individuals, corporations, and dealers are reluctant to realise losses, while mutual funds and foreigners, who together account for less than 5% of all trades (by value), are not.     

Stockholders’ Unrealized Returns and the Market Reaction to Financial Disclosures

Using both investor‐ and stock‐level data, I examine the relation between stockholders’ unrealized returns since purchase and the market response to earnings announcements. I demonstrate that stockholders’ unrealized gain/loss position moderates their trading behavior in response to earnings announcements. I also find that this behavior generates a short‐window return underreaction to earnings news. My results are generally consistent with predictions from prospect theory regarding the manner in which stockholders’ unrealized returns moderate their trading response to belief shocks. However, my results also suggest that an emotional component (i.e., regret‐avoidance/pride‐seeking) is necessary to explain the observed investor behavior.     

Financial disclosure,investor protection and stock market behavior: an international comparison

The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between financial opacity, investor protection and stock market behavior for sixteen countries. We use the 1995 CIFAR corporate disclosure ratings and the 2006 World Bank investor protection index to measure a country’s relative level of financial transparency and legal protection for investors. The return behavior of each country is examined using numerous time series tests such as serial correlation, Markov chain, runs, duration dependence and variance ratio tests. We found that the results show no significant differences between high and low disclosure countries. However, high disclosure countries appear to be associated with a lower level of stock market volatility. Cox proportional hazard test results indicate that extreme returns (positive and negative) are more likely in low disclosure countries.     

Investor recognition and stock returns

It is well established that investment fundamentals, such as earnings and cash flows, can explain only a small proportion of the variation in stock returns. We find that investor recognition of a firm’s stock can explain relatively more of the variation in stock returns. Consistent with Merton’s (J Finance 42(3):483–510, 1987) theoretical analysis, we show that (i) contemporaneous stock returns are positively related to changes in investor recognition, (ii) future stock returns are negatively related to changes in investor recognition, (iii) the above relations are stronger for stocks with greater idiosyncratic risk and (iv) corporate investment and financing activities are both positively related to changes in investor recognition. Our research suggests that investors and managers who are concerned with firm valuation should consider investor recognition in addition to accounting information and related investment fundamentals.     

Which institutional investor types are the most informed?

We examine the informativeness of quarterly disclosed portfolio holdings across four institutional investor types: hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds and private banking firms. Overweight positions outperform underweight positions only for hedge funds. By decomposing holdings and stock returns, we find that hedge funds are superior to other institutional investors both at picking industries and stocks and that they are better at forecasting long‐term as well as short‐term returns. Furthermore, our results show that hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds are able to successfully time the market. The outperformance of hedge funds is not explained by a liquidity premium.     

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.     

Identifying and Attracting the "right" Investors: Evidence on the Behavior of Institutional Investors

This article summarizes the findings of research the author has conducted over the past seven years that aims to answer a number of questions about institutional investors: Are there significant differences among institutional investors in time horizon and other trading practices that would enable such investors to be classified into types on the basis of their observable behavior? Assuming the answer to the first is yes, do corporate managers respond differently to the pressures created by different types of investors– and, by implication, are certain kinds of investors more desirable from corporate management's point of view? What kinds of companies tend to attract each type of investor, and how does a company's disclosure policy affect that process? The author's approach identifies three categories of institutional investors: (1) “transient” institutions, which exhibit high portfolio turnover and own small stakes in portfolio companies; (2) “dedicated” holders, which provide stable ownership and take large positions in individual firms; and (3) “quasi‐indexers,” which also trade infrequently but own small stakes (similar to an index strategy). As might be expected, the disproportionate presence of transient institutions in a company's investor base appears to intensify pressure for short‐term performance while also resulting in excess volatility in the stock price. Also not surprising, transient investors are attracted to companies with investor relations activities geared toward forward‐looking information and “news events,” like management earnings forecasts, that constitute trading opportunities for such investors. By contrast, quasi‐indexers and dedicated institutions are largely insensitive to shortterm performance and their presence is associated with lower stock price volatility. The research also suggests that companies that focus their disclosure activities on historical information as opposed to earnings forecasts tend to attract quasi‐indexers instead of transient investors. In sum, the author's research suggests that changes in disclosure practices have the potential to shift the composition of a firm's investor base away from transient investors and toward more patient capital. By removing some of the external pressures for short‐term performance, such a shift could encourage managers to establish a culture based on long‐run value maximization.