?Investor sentiment? and the closed-end fund puzzle: A 7 percent solution

Abstract

Lee, Shleifer, and Thaler (1991) argue that the “irrational noise trader” model of DeLong, Shleifer, Summers, and Waldmann (1990) “... is consistent with the published evidence on closed-end fund prices. ...” However, Lee, Shleifer, and Thaler provide no indication of how much of the variability of a closed-end fund's discounts and premiums is due to such “investor sentiment.” Using the signal extraction technique of French and Roll (1986) to measure noise, this article estimates that on average only 7 percent of the variance of a standardized measure of weekly changes in discounts and premiums can be attributed to noise-trading activity. “Investor sentiment,” therefore, seems to account for very little of a closed-end fund's discount and premium variability over time.