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The conservatism bias in an emerging stock market: Evidence from Taiwan

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  • Wu, Chen-Hui
  • Wu, Chin-Shun
  • Liu, Victor W.

Abstract

Behavioral theories predict that investors underreact to earnings announcements stemming from the conservatism bias and overreact to a string of earnings news due to representativeness heuristic. This paper thus examines trading strategies of buying past high EPS growth stocks and selling past low EPS growth stocks over 4 to 20 quarters. The results generally support conservative reactions in the medium-term horizon, but provide little support for the over-use of representativeness heuristic on the long-term horizon. Moreover, we find that investors react differently to the consistency sequences of the two extreme earnings growth portfolios.

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  • Wu, Chen-Hui & Wu, Chin-Shun & Liu, Victor W., 2009. "The conservatism bias in an emerging stock market: Evidence from Taiwan," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 494-505, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:17:y:2009:i:4:p:494-505
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