Cited by 95Financial Markets and Investment StrategiesFinancial Analysis and Corporate GovernanceFinancial Risk and Volatility Modeling

Investor sentiment in the stock market

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Baker, Malcolm, Wurgler, Jeffrey·2007·Journal of Economic Perspectives

Abstract

Investor sentiment, defined broadly, is a belief about future cash flows and investment risks that is not justified by the facts at hand. The question is no longer whether investor sentiment affects stock prices, but how to measure investor sentiment and quantify its effects. One approach is “bottom up,” using biases in individual investor psychology, such as overconfidence, representativeness, and conservatism, to explain how individual investors underreact or overreact to past returns or fundamentals The investor sentiment approach that we develop in this paper is, by contrast, distinctly “top down” and macroeconomic: we take the origin of investor sentiment as exogenous and focus on its empirical effects. We show that it is quite possible to measure investor sentiment and that waves of sentiment have clearly discernible, important, and regular effects on individual firms and on the stock market as a whole. The top-down approach builds on the two broader and more irrefutable assumptions of behavioral finance—sentiment and the limits to arbitrage—to explain which stocks are likely to be most affected by sentiment. In particular, stocks that are difficult to arbitrage or to value are most affected by sentiment.

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Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. [7]7. Barberis, Nicholas, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny, 1998, A model of investor sentiment, Journal of Financial Economics 49, 307-343.
  2. [9]9. Brown, John Dennis, 1991, 101 Years on Wall Street, Prentice Hall.
  3. [16]16. Edmans, Alex, Diego Garcia, and Oyvind Norli, 2006, Sports sentiment and stock returns, Journal of Finance, forthcoming.
  4. [26]26. Kumar, Alok, and Charles Lee, 2006, Retail investor sentiment and return comovement, Journal of Finance, forthcoming.
  5. [34]34. Ritter, Jay, 2003, Investment banking and securities issuance, in Constantinides, George, Milton Harris, and Rene Stulz, editors, Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Elsevier Science.
  6. [36]36. Seyhun, H. Nejat, 1998, Investment Intelligence from Insider Trading, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
  7. [37]37. Shiller, Robert J., 2000, Irrational Exuberance, Princeton University Press.

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Authors
Baker, M., & Wurgler, J.
Affiliations
National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
Venue
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Published
2007-04-01
Volume
21
Issue
2
Pages
129-151
ISSN
0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3123466764
Cited by
94
References
34
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 3
FWCI
2.33
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
  • National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
Harvard Business School
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Financial Markets and Investment Strategies
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Financial Analysis and Corporate Governance
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Financial Risk and Volatility Modeling
Keywords
investor sentiment, stock prices, behavioral finance, limits to arbitrage, overconfidence, representativeness bias, conservatism bias, sentiment measurement, stock valuation

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