This study presents evidence suggesting that investors do not fully unravel predictable pessimism in sell-side analysts' earnings forecasts. We show that measures of prior consensus and individual analyst forecast pessimism are predictive of both the sign of firms' earnings surprises and the...

This paper introduces the concept of divergence of sentiment to the behavioral finance literature. We measure the distance between people with positive and negative sentiment on a daily basis for 20 countries by using data from status updates on Facebook. The prediction is that a higher...

We show that short sellers are constrained by their losses. Using unique data on the mark-to-market profits of short sellers of U.S. stocks, we document an asymmetric response of short selling to gains versus losses. Short selling substantially falls following large losses but does not respond...

We examine the relative weights hedge fund investors attach to past information in the fund selection process. The weighting scheme appears inconsistent with econometric forecasting models that predict fund returns, alphas or Sharpe ratios. In particular, investor flows are highly sensitive to...