Stocks with high sentiment betas are more sensitive to investor sentiment, with more subjective valuations. We contend that sentiment beta also captures the duration of mispricing. Accordingly, stocks with high (low) sentiment betas provide opportunities for momentum (contrarian) traders. We...

Baker and Wurgler [2007] take a “top down” approach to behavioral finance and the stock market. Investor sentiment is taken to be exogenous and the focus is on its empirical effects. Sentiment is measurable and its waves have clearly discernible, important, and regular effects on firms and...

We use trade-level data to examine the role of actively managed funds (AMFs) in earnings news dissemination. We find AMFs are drawn to, and participate disproportionately more in, earnings announcements (EAs) that include bundled managerial guidance. When the two pieces of news are directionally...

We link a seemingly biased trading behavior to equilibrium asset prices. U.S. equity mutual fund managers tend to sell both their big winners and big losers. This selling pressure pushes down current prices and leads to higher future returns; aggregating across funds, we nd that securities for...

We show that mutual funds contribute to cross-sectional momentum and excess volatility through positive feedback trading. Stocks held by positive feedback funds exhibit much stronger momentum, almost doubling the returns from a simple momentum strategy. This “enhanced” momentum is robust to...

Utilizing monthly aggregate flow data for U.S. equity mutual funds over 1986-2008, we document several new findings on investor behavior. First, we find a strong negative relationship between changes in expected market volatility as measured by the VIX index and net equity fund flows. Second, we...

The active share of mutual funds drops significantly when investor sentiment is high, indicating that fund managers reduce their active stock selection and stay closer to their benchmarks during such periods. Our evidence is consistent with fund managers being sentiment-prone—challenging the...

We show that mutual fund managers' trading experiences bias their future repurchasing decisions. Specifically, a fund is 17% more likely to repurchase a stock when it previously sold the stock for a gain rather than for a loss. Fund managers still prefer to repurchase stocks they sold for a gain...

Islamic finance is the fastest growing segment of the global financial system and has been experiencing an impressive double-digit growth in recent history. Following the growth trend of Islamic finance, a rapidly rising affluent and well-educated Muslim middle class from the Islamic world and...