Investor Sentiment Measures Purged : A Necessary Double Check on Sentiment Impact

The investor sentiment measures based on market variables underperform those sentiment measures extracted from investor surveys in various applications. By purging the fundamental component out of the market-variable-based sentiment measures thoroughly, we propose a largely contamination-free sentiment measure, which no longer underperforms survey-based measures. Generally, the issue of contamination caused by fundamentals can be a hidden risk for market-variable-based measures, which may cause failures in detecting sentiment impact and misinterpreting risk-based results with behavioral stories. Overall, a double check using the contamination-free measure could be important and necessary