Sentiment indices based on investor sentiment surveys attempt to measure the stock market sentiment. The literature on these indices focusses mainly on whether investor sentiment influences the financial markets or not. But the term “sentiment” has never been defined in the literature....

This paper examines post-revision return drift, or PRD, following analysts' revisions of their stock recommendations. PRD refers to the finding that the analysts' recommendation changes predict future long-term returns in the same direction as the change (i.e., upgrades are followed by positive...

Modern Portfolio Theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, and the Efficient Market Hypothesis are cornerstone concepts in both academic and professional curricula. In spite of their long history and reputation, the CAPM and its extensions do not yield satisfactory empirical results. We argue...

Based on prospect theory, we posit that security analysts' target prices function as a reference point for takeover bids and affect deal completion. Using a sample of US takeovers from 1999 to 2014, we find a negative relation between target prices for a takeover target and the chances for...

This study provides novel evidence that expert economic agents' work-related activities are systematically influenced by the time-of-day. We use archival data derived from time-stamped quarterly earnings conference calls together with linguistic algorithms to measure and track the moods of...

We investigate the causal impacts of air pollution on analyst forecast accuracy around earnings announcements. Using the air quality index in analyst workplaces, we provide direct evidence of the following. First, air pollution significantly reduces analysts' earnings forecast accuracy in...

Predictable biases in analyst forecasts, both conservative and optimistic, distort share prices, but only for firms with hard-to-forecast earnings---those with extreme past returns, credit risk, idiosyncratic volatility, and other attributes linked to 14 popular anomalies. The prevalence of...

We analyze the role that financial analysts play in the sentiment effect on stock prices. Causality analysis reveals that sentiment affects various aspects of the work of analysts. We show that experienced analysts are aware of sentiment, consciously incorporate it, and have some control over...

Mood-induced optimism, cognitive inaccuracy, and distraction can affect analyst forecasts. This study compares and contrasts these influences. The novelty of our approach is that we first show that these behavioural biases have different implications for analysts' forecast errors conditioned on...

This paper studies how security analysts use industry-level and firm-specific information in issuing firms' earnings forecasts. Analysts who use more (less) industry-level (firm-specific) information have less available resources and incentives to allocate effort towards costly firm-specific...