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.     

Dumb money: Mutual fund flows and the cross-section of stock returns

We use mutual fund flows as a measure of individual investor sentiment for different stocks, and find that high sentiment predicts low future returns. Fund flows are dumb money–by reallocating across different mutual funds, retail investors reduce their wealth in the long run. This dumb money effect is related to the value effect: high sentiment stocks tend to be growth stocks. High sentiment also is associated with high corporate issuance, interpretable as companies increasing the supply of shares in response to investor demand.     

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 as conditioning information in asset pricing

This paper assesses whether incorporating investor sentiment as conditioning information in asset-pricing models helps capture the impacts of the size, value, liquidity and momentum effects on risk-adjusted returns of individual stocks. We use survey sentiment measures and a composite index as proxies for investor sentiment. In our conditional framework, the size effect becomes less important in the conditional CAPM and is no longer significant in all the other models examined. Furthermore, the conditional models often capture the value, liquidity and momentum effects.     

Global,local, and contagious investor sentiment

We construct investor sentiment indices for six major stock markets and decompose them into one global and six local indices. In a validation test, we find that relative sentiment is correlated with the relative prices of dual-listed companies. Global sentiment is a contrarian predictor of country-level returns. Both global and local sentiment are contrarian predictors of the time-series of cross-sectional returns within markets: When sentiment is high, future returns are low on relatively difficult to arbitrage and difficult to value stocks. Private capital flows appear to be one mechanism by which sentiment spreads across markets and forms global sentiment.     

Investor sentiment and the stock market’s reaction to monetary policy

This paper shows that monetary policy decisions have a significant effect on investor sentiment. The effect of monetary news on sentiment depends on market conditions (bull versus bear market). We also find that monetary policy actions in bear market periods have a larger effect on stocks that are more sensitive to changes in investor sentiment and credit market conditions. Overall, the results show that investor sentiment plays a significant role in the effect of monetary policy on the stock market.     

IPO first‐day returns: Skewness preference,investor sentiment and uncertainty underlying factors

In this paper, we investigate the initial public offering (IPO) first-day returns. Our focus is to examine the irrational component of the agent behavior towards IPO lotteries. Based on 234 French IPOs performed between 2002 and 2012, we find that IPOs with high initial returns have higher idiosyncratic skewness, turnover and momentum. This finding provides empirical evidence for investors' preference for stocks with lottery-like features and investor sentiment. In addition, we show that the skewness preference and the investor sentiment effect are stronger during periods of favorable market conditions. Our results are robust to the integration of uncertainty underlying factors.     

Investor sentiment and the near-term stock market

We investigate investor sentiment and its relation to near-term stock market returns. We find that many commonly cited indirect measures of sentiment are related to direct measures (surveys) of investor sentiment. However, past market returns are also an important determinant of sentiment. Although sentiment levels and changes are strongly correlated with contemporaneous market returns, our tests show that sentiment has little predictive power for near-term future stock returns. Finally, our evidence does not support the conventional wisdom that sentiment primarily affects individual investors and small stocks.     

Institutional trading,investor sentiment,and lottery-like stock preferences

This paper explores the time-varying institutional investor preference for lottery-like stocks. On average, institutional investor holdings reflect an aversion to lottery-like stocks. However, I find that an institutions’ aversion to lottery-like stocks is reduced when investor sentiment is low. Moreover, I find that during low sentiment periods, institutional investors have abnormally high trading profits in more positively skewed stocks. These results suggest that institutions reduce their aversion toward lottery-like stocks during low sentiment periods to profitably trade in lottery-like stocks.     

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.     

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.     

The return impact of realized and expected idiosyncratic volatility

We show that the negative relation between realized idiosyncratic volatility, measured over the prior month, and returns is robust in non-January months. Controlling for realized idiosyncratic volatility, we show that the relation between returns and expected idiosyncratic volatility is positive and robust. Realized and expected idiosyncratic volatility are separate and important effects describing the cross-section of returns. We find the negative return on a zero-investment portfolio that is long high realized idiosyncratic volatility stocks and short low realized idiosyncratic volatility stocks is dependent on aggregate investor sentiment. In cross-sectional tests, we find the negative relation is weaker for stocks with a large analyst following and stronger for stocks with high dispersion of analyst forecasts. The positive relation between expected idiosyncratic volatility and returns is not due to mispricing.     

Connecting two markets: An equilibrium framework for shorts,longs, and stock loans

We analyze a reduced-form framework for understanding the equity loan market's impact on share prices. We show that hard-to-borrow stocks will have distinct return patterns, responding more to shocks in the supply of shares available, and to changes in the heterogeneity of investor beliefs, than other stocks. We conduct two empirical tests in which we find strong support for these equilibrium predictions. In our first test, we take advantage of a tax-driven exogenous shock to share loan supply and find that when supply is reduced around dividend record dates, prices of hard-to-borrow stocks increase 1.1% while prices of easy-to-borrow stocks are unaffected. In our second test, we find that hard-to-borrow stocks have 4.8% lower three-month returns than other stocks, with negative returns concentrated in stocks with high heterogeneity in investor beliefs. Thus, we extend the Diether, Malloy, and Scherbina (2002) result that stocks with a greater dispersion of investor beliefs have lower returns.     

Determinants and consequences of information processing delay: Evidence from the Thomson Reuters Institutional Brokers’ Estimate System

We present new evidence that highlights the role of information intermediaries in the distribution and processing of earnings estimates in capital markets. We find that the time taken to activate an analyst's earnings forecast in the Thomson Reuters Institutional Brokers’ Estimate System is related to measures of investor demand for timely information processing, processing difficulty, and limited attention. Furthermore, we find that forecast announcement returns are muted and post-announcement drift is magnified for forecasts with longer unexpected activation delay and that market inefficiency is concentrated in neglected stocks and potentially exploitable. Finally, analyzing intraday returns, we find that activations facilitate price discovery.     

Exchange-traded fund ownership and underlying stock mispricing

In response to the increasing proliferation of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and a warning from the Wall Street hero Michael Burry that passive investing has put the stock market into ‘bubble’ territory, we examine the relation between stock ownership by ETFs and mispricing from 2002 to 2018. We find that increased ETF ownership induces overpricing in underlying stocks. We then identify three mechanisms for this relationship: the overpricing of stocks attributable to increased ETF ownership is stronger for stocks that experience an increase in passive ETF ownership; during periods characterised by high investor sentiment; and for illiquid stocks. Our results are robust to a battery of tests including alternative measures for all key variables and are not confounded by the global financial crisis. Additional analyses show that mispricing caused by ETF ownership change is not driven by firm fundamentals and does not exacerbate stocks' information environment around earnings announcement.     

我国投资者情绪与股票收益实证研究

根据投资者情绪是股票价格形成重要影响因素这一研究观点,围绕投资者情绪是否构成系统性风险及其对不同类型股票的差异化影响,运用我国股市交易数据进行的实证研究结果表明,投资者情绪不构成股市的系统性风险,但对不同市值的股票有着差异化的影响,随着股票的"投机性"增加,投资者情绪对其影响也增大.此外,投资者情绪会削弱股票收益与其波动的正相关性,且对于"投机性"越高的股票,这一影响也越大.     

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.     

Measuring the effects of geographical distance on stock market correlation

Recent studies suggest that the correlation of stock returns increases with decreasing geographical distance. However, there is some debate on the appropriate methodology for measuring the effects of distance on correlation. We modify a regression approach suggested in the literature and complement it with an approach from spatial statistics, the mark correlation function. For the stocks contained in the S&P 500 that we examine, both approaches lead to similar results. Contrary to previous studies we find that beyond 50 miles geographical proximity is irrelevant for stock return correlations. For distances below 50 miles, we can show that the magnitude of local correlations varies with investor sentiment.     

Does the difference in valuation between domestic and foreign investors help explain their distinct holdings of domestic stocks?

This paper proposes an investor heterogeneity approach to the different domestic stock holdings between domestic and foreign investors. Specifically, we hypothesize that domestic and foreign investors evaluate domestic stocks via different models and thus arrive at different valuations for them; consequently, the two investor groups are attracted to different sets of domestic stocks. Using panel data from Korea, we find strong support for our hypothesis. More precisely, we find that the foreign ownership of a stock increases with foreigners’ valuation for the stock in excess of that of domestic investors. As we control for various firm characteristics known to be correlated with foreign ownership, our results indicate that the valuation difference between domestic and foreign investors can help explain the allocation of domestic stocks between the two groups over and above the existing explanations.     

Institutions and Individuals at the Turn-of-the-Year

This article evaluates the tax-loss-selling hypothesis against the window-dressing hypothesis as explanations for turn-of-the-year anomalies. We examine differences between securities dominated by individual investors versus those dominated by institutional investors and find that the effect is more pervasive in the former. Controlling for capitalization, we find that in early January (late December), stocks with greater individual investor interest outperform (underperform) stocks with greater institutional investor interest. These results hold for both stocks that previously appreciated in value and stocks that previously depreciated in value. The results are most consistent with the tax-loss-selling hypothesis as an explanation for the turn-of-the-year effect.