Stock return predictability by investor sentiment has been subject to constant updating, but reaching a decisive conclusion seems rather challenging as academic research relies heavily on US data. We provide fresh evidence on stock return predictability in an international setting and show that...

Extensive research has revealed that alphabetical name ordering tends to provide an advantage to those positioned in the beginning of an alphabetical listing. This paper is the first to explore the implications of this alphabetic bias in financial markets. We find that U.S. stocks that appear...

The research literature shows that investor sentiment is a contrarian predictor of aggregate stock market returns. However, we contend that investor sentiment only predicts aggregate stock market returns during high-sentiment states where overpricing is more prevalent than underpricing. Using a...

We measure the information content of monthly analyst consensus forecasts for one-year-forward earnings per share (EPS) based on two well-established price discovery measures drawn from the area of market micro-structure research. Employing a 36-year sample of large US companies listed in the...

Using Internet search volume for lottery to capture gambling sentiment shifts, we show that when the overall gambling sentiment is high, investor demand for lottery-like stocks increases, these stocks earn positive short-run abnormal returns, managers are more likely to announce stock splits to...

This paper categorizes investors into five groups. They are: efficient markets, risk premium, genius superior traders, rejectors of efficient market theory and those who use research to make superior risk adjusted returns. Successful investment involves estimation and optimization and these are...

We show that stock prices underreact when there is a political event, reflected in higher momentum returns. We conjecture that political news crowds out stock news cause investors to distract, trade more indexes and underreact to firm specific news. We analyze momentum returns following general...

We document a robust positive relationship between the belief dispersion about macroeconomic conditions among household investors and the stock market trading volume, using more than 30 years of household survey data and a novel approach to measuring belief dispersions. Notably, such a...

We empirically test whether the disposition effect has an asymmetrical impact on the price adjustment on the ex-dividend day of common stocks listed in NYSE and AMEX during the 2001-2008 period. We find that stocks with accrued gains have a greater ex-day price drop ratio (PDR) than stocks with...

Despite momentum's strong historical performance, its returns have large negative skewness and occasionally experiences persistent strings of sharp negative returns, referred as "momentum crashes" in the recent literature. I argue that momentum crashes are due to crowded trades which push prices...