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Do actions speak louder than words? Evidence from microblogs

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  • Goutte, Maud-Rose

Abstract

This research identifies the determinants of investors’ future beliefs by analyzing more than 50 million tweets on thousands of stocks from the microblogging platform StockTwits. To do so, I divide tweets into two categories: beliefs, representing the average sentiment of all investors regarding a particular stock, and actions, representing the actual transactions disclosed by StockTwits’ users in their tweets. The results show that investors’ next-period beliefs are positively impacted both by beliefs and actions of the current day. The quality of the investment advice strengthens this effect. More communication between investors leads to greater diversity in beliefs and more uncertainty.

Suggested Citation

  • Goutte, Maud-Rose, 2022. "Do actions speak louder than words? Evidence from microblogs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:beexfi:v:33:y:2022:i:c:s2214635021001611
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbef.2021.100619
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sentiment analysis; NLP; Text analysis; Microblogs; Text classification; Herding; Word-of-mouth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General

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