Retail investors pay over twice as much attention to local companies than non-local ones, based on Google searches. News volume and volatility amplify this attention gap. Attention appears causally related to perceived proximity: first, acquisition by a nonlocal company is associated with less...

We document the growth of retail options trading over time and provide evidence that retail investors are drawn to options by anticipated spikes in volatility. Using data on options trades by clientele groups, we show retail investors purchase options in a concentrated fashion before firms'...

Terrorism is a major issue in the 21st century. In this paper we examine the effect of terrorism on the stock market. We go beyond previous studies to explore the spectre of terrorism on the market rather than terrorist activities. Using a narrative-based approach à la Shiller (2019), we find...

The present work seeks to analyze the herding behavior phenomenon as a destabilizing factor of the capital market, while studying the relation between the herding behavior phenomenon and market profitability and volatility. The results allow us to verify the existence of a significant intensity...

We establish a direct link between the idiosyncratic volatility (IVol) puzzle and the behavior of sophisticated and private investors. To do so, we employ three option-based measures of informed trading and attention data from Google Trends. Our analyses show that the IVol puzzle is particularly...

This study presents a new European investor sentiment index, EURsent, based on new individual sentiment proxies such as VSTOXX, gold, and the German bond yield spread, and studies the spillover and contagion between the United States and Europe. Furthermore, it analyses the simultaneous...

We propose a novel measure of risk perceptions: the price of volatile stocks (PVSt), defined as the book-to-market ratio of low-volatility stocks minus the book-to-market ratio of high-volatility stocks. PVSt is high when perceived risk directly measured from surveys and option prices is low....

This paper aims to measure the positive (Expectations) and negative (Fears) investor sentiment about the ongoing economic conditions and analyze both sentiments for changes in stock market returns. Following the method proposed by Da et al. (2014), this study estimates the investor’s economic...

Portfolios in idiosyncratic momentum are formed on past residuals of the Fama-French three factor model rather than past total returns. This study examines whether the idiosyncratic momentum strategy can sustain excess returns following the emergence of traded options. We compare idiosyncratic...

Volatility is an important component of asset pricing; an increase in volatility on markets can trigger changes in the risk distribution of financial assets. In conventional financial theory, investors are considered to be rational and any changes in relevant risk are assumed to be a result of...