Understanding the role of aggregate analyst attention in resolving stock market uncertainty

Abstract

This paper investigates whether sell-side analyst attention effect extends to the aggregate stock market. Our findings demonstrate that: (i) aggregate analyst coverage negatively predict future stock market returns while controlling for a rich set of predictors related to economic fundamentals and investor sentiment. (ii) higher aggregate analyst coverage also precede lower market-wide cash-flow volatility, cash holdings, absolute magnitude of unexpected earnings, investor information-search demand, and greater capital expenditures, long-term debt, indicating that the negative return premium stems from less compensation for lower expected market uncertainty. (iii) long-short profits of overreaction-related and lottery-related anomalies significantly decrease following high levels of aggregate analyst attention. Our results highlight the important role of aggregate analyst attention in reducing stock market uncertainty and enhancing investor rationality, thereby mitigating anomalies induced by psychological biases.