IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/thk/wpaper/inetwp115.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Market Sentiment Drives Forecasts of Stock Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Roman Frydman

    (New York University)

  • Nicholas Mangee

    (Georgia Southern University)

  • Josh Stillwagon

    (Babson College)

Abstract

We reveal a novel channel through which market participants’ sentiment influences how they forecast stock returns: their optimism (pessimism) affects the weights they assign to fundamentals. Our analysis yields four main findings. First, if good (bad) “news” about dividends and interest rates coincides with participants’ optimism (pessimism), the news about these fundamentals has a significant effect on participants’ forecasts of future returns and has the expected signs (positive for dividends and negative for interest rates). Second, in models without interactions, or when market sentiment is neutral or conflicts with news about dividends and/or interest rates, this news often does not have a significant effect on ex ante or ex post returns. Third, market sentiment is largely unrelated to the state of economic activity, indicating that it is driven by non-fundamental considerations. Moreover, market sentiment influences stock returns highly irregularly, in terms of both timing and magnitude. This finding supports recent theoretical approaches recognizing that economists and market participants alike face Knightian uncertainty about the correct model driving stock returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Roman Frydman & Nicholas Mangee & Josh Stillwagon, 2020. "How Market Sentiment Drives Forecasts of Stock Returns," Working Papers Series inetwp115, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    • Handle: RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp115
    DOI: 10.36687/inetwp115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.36687/inetwp115
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.36687/inetwp115?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aktham Maghyereh & Hussein Abdoh, 2022. "Global financial crisis versus COVID‐19: Evidence from sentiment analysis," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 218-248, August.
    2. Adnan Abo Al Haija & Rahma Lahyani, 2023. "Dynamic interactions of actual stock returns with forecasted stock returns and investors’ risk aversion: empirical evidence interplaying the impact of Covid-19 pandemic," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 1129-1149, October.
    3. Roman Frydman & Soren Johansen & Anders Rahbek & Morten Nyboe Tabor, 2021. "Asset Prices Under Knightian Uncertainty," Working Papers Series inetwp172, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    4. Deimante Teresiene & Greta Keliuotyte-Staniuleniene & Yiyi Liao & Rasa Kanapickiene & Ruihui Pu & Siyan Hu & Xiao-Guang Yue, 2021. "The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Consumer and Business Confidence Indicators," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-23, April.
    5. Łukasz Baszczak, 2023. "Ekonomia narracji – początki nowego nurtu," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 1, pages 66-81.
    6. Dias, Ishanka K. & Fernando, J.M. Ruwani & Fernando, P. Narada D., 2022. "Does investor sentiment predict bitcoin return and volatility? A quantile regression approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    stock-return forecasts; fundamentals; market sentiment; structural change; model ambiguity.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets
    • C58 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Financial Econometrics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Pia Malaney (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inetnus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.