In this research authors show that institutional investors' skill matters the most during high sentiment periods when market signals are noisy. The results reveal that fund managers with the highest (lowest) skill add (lose) $7.71 ($5.64) million of value during high sentiment periods, compared...

The security market line (SML) accords with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) by taking on an upward slope in pessimistic sentiment periods, but is downward sloping during optimistic periods. We hypothesize that this finding obtains because periods of optimism attract equity investment by...

This paper sheds empirical light on whether sentiment affects the profitability of price momentum strategies. We hypothesize that news that contradicts investors' sentiment causes cognitive dissonance, which slows the diffusion of signals that oppose the direction of sentiment. This phenomenon...