Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Response to Corporate News

We examine whether market-wide investor sentiment influences the stock price response to firm-specific news. We use the recently developed measure of investor sentiment by Baker and Wurgler (2006, 2007) and focus on the stock price response to earnings announcements. Our results indicate that the prevailing sentiment sways stock price response to news in the direction of the sentiment - the positive stock price response to good news increases with sentiment, whereas the negative stock price response to bad news decreases with sentiment. The influence of sentiment on the stock price response is especially pronounced for small stocks, young stocks, volatile stocks, non-dividend paying stocks and distressed stocks. We find that sentiment also impacts the stock price response to dividend changes and stock split announcements