This paper examines unique data on dark pool activity for a large cross-section of US stocks in 2009. Dark pool activity is concentrated in liquid stocks. Nasdaq (AMEX) stocks have significantly higher (lower) dark pool activity than NYSE stocks controlling for liquidity. For a given stock, dark...

We define a sentiment indicator based on option prices, valuation ratios and interest rates. The indicator can be interpreted as a lower bound on the expected growth in fundamentals that a rational investor would have to perceive in order to be happy to hold the market. The lower bound was...

The possibility to investigate the impact of news on stock prices has observed a strong evolution thanks to the recent use of natural language processing (NLP) in finance and economics. In this paper, we investigate COVID-19 news, elaborated with the "Natural Language Toolkit" that uses machine...

Divergence in investor beliefs is an important driver of the negative relation between option trading volume and future stock returns. We find a strong negative relation between disagreement-based option trades and future stock returns, and this relation is markedly amplified when the underlying...

We provide a psychological explanation for the delayed price response to news about economically linked firms. We show that the return predictability of economically linked firms depends on the nearness to the 52-week high stock price. The interaction between news about economically linked firms...

In addition to a myriad of industrial uses, precious metals continue to play an important role in the global financial system; they are increasingly popular as an investment and form part of a well-diversified portfolio in addition to acting as central bank reserves. Understanding how...

Passive Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) are ideally suited to style-level feedback trading because of their high liquidity, ease of short-selling, and pure play on investment styles. I find strong evidence of short-term style momentum trading in ETFs. Institutional investors that use ETFs do not...

We explore the possibility that overnight returns can serve as a measure of firm-specific investor sentiment by analyzing whether they exhibit characteristics expected of a sentiment measure. First, we document short-term persistence in overnight returns, consistent with existing evidence of...

This study provides evidence that high-frequency traders (HFTs) identify patterns in past trades and orders that allow them to anticipate and trade ahead of other investors' order flow. Specifically, HFTs' aggressive purchases and sales lead those of other investors, and this effect is stronger...

Stock markets worldwide have rewarded patient investors, hence the common advice to ‘buy and hold'. Yet even with a large body of research over a prolonged period, proving this concept remains an onerous exercise for academics. We use Tobin's Q and the dividend yield to build an equilibrium...