The term structure effects of individual stock investor sentiment on excess returns

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we construct the individual stock sentiment indexes at daily, weekly and monthly frequencies. We empirically demonstrate the different effects of individual stock sentiment of three frequencies on the excess returns. The results show that the effect of individual stock sentiment on excess returns is a monotonous decreasing function of time term in China's stock market, which presents obvious term structure effect. Moreover, we find that sentiment factor can better explain the variation of excess returns than size factor and book‐to‐market factor do at the same frequency, and thus we should pay more attention to the individual effect of investor sentiment in the short‐term decision‐making. Our results shed new light on the short‐sighted behaviour of irrational investors and the micro‐mechanism of sentiment effect.