Investors' perception of performance is biased because the relevant measure, returns, is rarely displayed. Major indices ignore dividends, inducing mechanical underperformance on ex-dividend days. Newspapers are more pessimistic on these days, consistent with mistaking the index for a return....

We extend the noise trader risk model of Delong et al. (J Polit Econ 98:703–738, 1990) to a model with multiple risky assets to demonstrate the effect of investor sentiment on the cross-section of stock returns. Our model formally demonstrates that market-wide sentiment leads to relatively...

We identify all return leader-follower pairs among individual stocks using Granger causality regressions. Thus-identified leaders can reliably predict their followers' returns out of sample, and the return predictability works at the level of individual stocks rather than industries. Our results...