Individual Investor Sentiment Research Articles

Influence of individual investor sentiment on Taiwan option prices during 2007-2010 financial crisis

Purpose – This paper investigates changes in risk-neutral distribution derived from Taiwan stockindex options under different market conditions. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether individual investor sentiment significantly influences the Taiwan option prices. Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopt the optimization method to estimate the risk-neutral distribution from the Taiwan stock index options and use the t-test to examine the difference in risk-neutral skewness, kurtosis, and confidence interval between the pre-crisis and crisis periods. This paper tests the impact of individual investor sentiment on risk-neutral skewness and confidence interval in two sub-periods. Findings – The authors find that errors in individual investors’ expectations significantly influence the Taiwan stock index option prices. Research limitations/implications – The data concerning the sentiment of speculative institutional investors are incomplete for the Taiwan option market. Therefore, this paper focusses on the analysis of individual investor sentiment. Further research can study the impact of institutional investor sentiment in emerging markets. Social implications – The previous literature has suggested that option prices reflect information before the information is revealed in stock prices. Therefore, an important implication is to analyze the information quality revealed in option prices by studying whether the changes in option prices are due to investor sentiment or non-sentiment-related components. Originality/value – Most of the studies in the literature have focussed on the US option market, and their applicability may vary across different microstructures. This paper shows that the influence of individual investor sentiment in an emerging market is different from that in the US market.

Investor sentiment and the underperformance of technology firms initial public offerings

This research examines the effect of individual and institutional investor sentiment toward the overall market at the time of Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the aftermarket performance of technology IPO shares. The study which is based on 1346 U.S. technology IPOs completed between 1992 and 2009 shows that the irrational component of individual investor sentiment negatively affects shares’ aftermarket performance: the more optimistic individual investors are at the time of IPO, the lower the shares’ aftermarket return. On the other hand, the rational component of institutional investor sentiment does not affect the shares’ short-run performance, yet positively affects their long-run performance. In contrast with prior theoretical models this paper shows that investor overconfidence positively affects technology IPO shares’ aftermarket performance. The paper extends the behavioral finance literature by providing evidence on the negative role played by noise trading in affecting technology and biotechnology IPO shares performance.

An examination of U.S. institutional and individual investor sentiment effect on the Turkish stock market

This study examines the effect of rational and irrational components of U.S. institutional and individual investor sentiment on Istanbul Stock Market (ISE) return and volatility. The results show that there is a significant spillover effect of U.S. investor sentiment on stock return and volatility of ISE. A breakdown of sentiment by the type of investor shows that the impact of institutional sentiment is greater than that of individual sentiment. A breakdown of sentiment by rationality shows that the effect of rational sentiment on ISE return is faster though not necessarily greater than that of irrational sentiment. The conclusion from these results is that the effect of U.S. investor sentiment is systemic and cannot be diversified away. U.S. investor sentiment, therefore, constitutes a priced risk factor and must be accounted for accordingly in international asset pricing models. The findings also provide some evidence of a negative relationship between U.S. investor sentiment and ISE return volatility.

Relationship between Individual Investor Sentiment with Its Volatility and Returns of Small-Cap Stocks

Due to the irrational behavior of individual investors have a significant impact on the stock market, and Chinese stock market with inexperienced individual investors as the main body, our individual investor sentiment may play a more important role than in Western countries in the stock trading process. Therefore, this paper use ARMA-GARCH model to examine the relationship between the investor sentiment along its volatility and the small-cap stocks, which are individually described by newly opened stock trading accounts and the CSI 500. The results show that: The individual investor behavior exhibits a short-term ARCH effects and small-cap stocks exhibit short-term gain inertia; the high number of newly opened stock trading accounts responses to high small-cap stocks yields and display a "spillover effect" to market return; using newly opened stock trading accounts as individual investor sentiment index has great explanatory power to small-cap stocks in China.

Relationship between Individual Investor Sentiment with its Volatility and Returns of Small-Cap Stocks

Relationship between Individual Investor Sentiment with its Volatility and Returns of Small-Cap Stocks

Noise traders and the rational investors: a comparison of the 1990s and the 2000s

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the effect of individual and institutional sentiments on the US stock returns during a prolonged bull phase of ten years in the 1990s compared to shorter boom and bust cycles of the 2000s. The study is focussed on a set of stocks that are prone to sentiments and speculations. Design/methodology/approach – To compare the dynamic interaction of individual and institutional sentiments and stock returns, the authors use the vector autoregression (VAR) approach. The VAR model has proven to be especially useful for describing the dynamic behavior of economic and financial time series because it does not impose a priori restriction on the structure of the system. Using impulse response function, the authors determine how stock returns respond over time to a shock in institutional and individual sentiments. Findings – The authors find that sentiments of individual investors can affect returns mostly when there is a prolonged upward trend in stock prices, while sentiments of institutional investors can impact the returns when stock market is more volatile. Originality/value – This paper compares the effect of noise traders and rational investors’ sentiment on stock returns during the persistent period of positive abnormal returns of the 1990s and the more volatile stock returns of the 2000s.

Differences in Trading and Pricing Between Stock and Index Options

We find that the demand for stock options that increases exposure to the underlying is positively related to the individual investor sentiments and past market returns, whereas the demand for index options is invariant to these factors. These differences in trading patterns are also reflected in the differences in the composition of traders with different types of options—options on stocks are actively traded by individual investors, whereas trades in index options are more often motivated by the hedging demand of sophisticated investors. Consistent with a demand-based view of option pricing, the individual investor sentiments and past market returns are related to time-series variations in the slope of the implied volatility smile of stock options, but they have little impact on the prices of index options. The pricing impact is more pronounced in options with a higher concentration of unsophisticated investors and those with higher delta hedging costs. Our results provide evidence that factors not related to fundamentals also impact security prices. This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, finance.

Market Sentiment and the Fama-French Factor Premia

We study how market sentiment is dynamically related to a range of risk premia in the short-run, using three measures of sentiment (the implied volatility index, investment advisor sentiment, and individual investor sentiment) and four factor premia (market, size, value, and momentum) for the U.S. market. Based on the generalized impulse-response analysis in a VAR framework, we find that the sentiment measures have weak impacts on risk premia. However, we observe strong feedback effects where these sentiments are led by risk premia. That is, a higher market or size premium makes market participants bullish, while a higher value or momentum premium induces fear among market participants. We also find that three sentiment measures are closely related in the short run; in particular, the advisor sentiment has strong dynamic impacts on the implied volatility and individual investor sentiment.

The effect of US individual investor sentiment on industry‐specific stock returns and volatility

PurposeThis paper examines the effect of rational and irrational investor sentiment on the stock return and volatility of US auto, finance, food, oil and utility industries.Design/methodology/approachThe American Association of Individual Investors Index (AAII) is used as a proxy for US individual investor sentiment. The US market fundamentals are regressed on investor sentiment in order to capture the effect of macroeconomic risk factors on investor sentiment. Then impulse response functions (IRFs) are generated from a VAR model to investigate the effect of unanticipated movements in US investor sentiment on both industry‐specific stock return and volatility.FindingsThe results show a significant impact of investor sentiment on stock return and volatility in all the industries. We find that the positive rational component of US individual investor sentiment tends to increase the stock return in these industries. We also document that unanticipated increase in the rational component of US individual investor sentiment has a significant negative impact only on the industry volatilities of US auto and finance industries.Research limitations/implicationsThe results are based only on the 1999 – 2010 US industry‐specific stock return and volatility data and are confined to these industries.Practical implicationsThe findings of this paper can help investors to improve their asset return generating models by incorporating investor sentiment. The findings can also help policymakers to design policies that stabilize sentiment and reduce volatility and uncertainty in the stock markets.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the growing literature on behavioral finance by filling a gap and addressing the impact of investor sentiment in the various US industries.

Investor sentiment and value and growth stock index options

The paper examines the relationship between both individual and institutional investor sentiment measures and the risk-neutral skewness (RNS) of seven stock index options comprising either growth or value stocks. It provides novel evidence that growth index option prices are affected by sentiment measures. The regression results indicate a significantly positive relationship between sentiment measures and the RNS estimated from four growth index options and a negative relationship with two value index options. The results are economically significant since an associated long–short trading strategy yields high abnormal returns with a Sharpe ratio of up to 1.1 and zero exposure to systematic risk. These high abnormal returns provide evidence of a value premium type anomaly in the index options markets.

Risk Preferences, Investor Sentiment and Lottery Stocks: A Stochastic Dominance Approach

Lottery stocks are a puzzle: individual investors value these stocks highly despite their low average returns and high volatility (Kumar [2009]). I argue that individuals are attracted to lottery stocks because they are risk-seeking and sentiment-prone. Because risk preferences are not directly observable, I use a model-free approach based on stochastic dominance to infer aggregate risk preferences. I also use a direct measure of individual investor sentiment, the bull-bear spread, to test whether sentiment affects the returns of lottery stocks. My results show that lottery stock investors are indeed risk seekers. Sentiment also plays an important role in explaining the demand and returns of lottery versus nonlottery stocks. The lottery stock puzzle can thus be understood only by incorporating unusual risk preferences and the propensity for individual investors to trade on sentiment.

Investor Sentiment and Value and Growth Index Options

This paper examines the relationship between investor sentiment and stock index options. More specifically, it investigates the contrasting impact of individual and institutional investor sentiment on value and growth stock options. We take the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 Growth indexes as proxies for growth portfolios and the Michigan Consumer Confidence Index as a proxy for individual sentiment. The findings show that individual sentiment exerts a significantly positive impact on the risk-neutral skewness of the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 Growth index options while it is unrelated to the risk-neutral skewness of the Russell 2000 Value index option. Our empirical results support the conjecture that options on growth stock indexes are more likely to be affected by individual investor sentiment because proportionally more individual customers trade these contracts as compared with those on value indexes.

Investor sentiment and stock returns: Some international evidence

Abstract We examine whether consumer confidence – as a proxy for individual investor sentiment – affects expected stock returns internationally in 18 industrialized countries. In line with recent evidence for the U.S., we find that sentiment negatively forecasts aggregate stock market returns on average across countries. When sentiment is high, future stock returns tend to be lower and vice versa. This relation also holds for returns of value stocks, growth stocks, small stocks, and for different forecasting horizons. Finally, we employ a cross-sectional perspective and provide evidence that the impact of sentiment on stock returns is higher for countries which have less market integrity and which are culturally more prone to herd-like behavior and overreaction.

Investor sentiment, mutual fund flows and its impact on returns and volatility

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of individual investor sentiment on the return process and conditional volatility of three main US market indices (Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P500 and Nasdaq100). Individual investor sentiment is measured by aggregate money flows in and out of domestically oriented US mutual funds.Design/methodology/approachA generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH)‐in‐mean specification is used, where our measure for individual sentiment enters the mean and conditional volatility equation.FindingsFor a sample period of six years (February 1998 until December 2004), we find that sentiment has a significant and asymmetric impact on volatility, increasing it more when sentiment is bearish. Using terminology of De Long et al., we find evidence for the “hold more” effect, which states that when noise traders hold more of the asset, they also see their returns increase, and the “create space” effect, which states that noise traders are rewarded for the additional risk they generate themselves.Originality/valueIn contrast to existing studies using explicit measures of market sentiment on low sampling frequencies, the use of daily mutual flow data offers a unique picture on investors' portfolio rebalancing and trading behavior. We propose an integrated framework that jointly tests for the effects of mutual fund flows on stock return and conditional volatility.

Stock market behavior and investor sentiment: Evidence from China

The relationship among stock returns, market volatilities and individual investor sentiment is an important topic in behavioral economics and finance. This paper uses a unique data set—China’s newly opened stock trading accounts to test the relationships among stock returns, volatilities and individual investor sentiment in the Chinese stock market. It is found that there is a positive relationship between shifts in sentiment and stock returns, and that shifts in sentiment are negatively correlated with market volatility, that is to say, volatility increases (decreases) when investors become more bearish (bullish).

Dumb money: Mutual fund flows and the cross-section of stock returns

We use mutual fund flows as a measure of individual investor sentiment for different stocks, and find that high sentiment predicts low future returns. Fund flows are dumb money–by reallocating across different mutual funds, retail investors reduce their wealth in the long run. This dumb money effect is related to the value effect: high sentiment stocks tend to be growth stocks. High sentiment also is associated with high corporate issuance, interpretable as companies increasing the supply of shares in response to investor demand.

Are survey forecasts of individual and institutional investor sentiments rational?

We examine the effects of rational risk factors on investor sentiments. We find that institutional investor sentiments are more rational than individual investor sentiments. There are significant positive effects of, market return and dividend yield and negative effect of inflation on both types of sentiments. These risk factors have stronger effects on institutional than individual investor sentiments. Also, there are significant effects of term spread and HML on the institutional investor sentiments. The evidence suggests that linkages between sentiments and stock return stems from a combination of rational outlook and noise i.e. expectations that are not fully justified by information.

Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Liquidity

Recent research on liquidity has reported that the aggregate liquidity in the stock market varies over time and there is evidence suggesting that this variation affects stock returns. Although the importance of market liquidity in asset pricing has been well documented, we know little about what causes stock market liquidity to vary over time. This paper examines how investor sentiment affects the time-series variation in stock market liquidity. I use the measure developed by Amihud (2002) as a proxy for liquidity. The investor sentiment measures consist of two types: direct and indirect measures. The direct measures are constructed from the Index of Investor Intelligence (as a proxy for institutional investor sentiment) and the Index of the American Association of Individual Investors (as a proxy for individual investor sentiment). The indirect measure is the Baker and Wurgler (2005) sentiment index (BW index). The results show that the stock market is more liquid when investor sentiment is higher. Specifically, both institutional investor sentiment and individual investor sentiment have significant positive effects on market liquidity. The BW index is also associated with higher market liquidity but the effect is much weaker. Further tests show that the BW index only influences the liquidity of a subset of stocks. Overall, the results are consistent with the theoretical prediction that investor sentiment increases stock market liquidity.

The Impact of U.S. Individual and Institutional Investor Sentiment on Foreign Stock Markets

This study examines the degree to which U.S. individual and institutional investor sentiments are propagated abroad. Previous studies construe investor sentiments as fully irrational; we find contrary evidence that individual and institutional investor sentiments are driven by both rational and irrational factors, with distinct effects on domestic and international stock market returns. The generalized impulse response functions from VAR model estimations show that U.S. institutional investor sentiments have varying degrees of impact on the equity markets of the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil, and no effect on Chile. Specifically, the individual investor sentiment effect is statistically significant only for the U.K market. Not surprisingly, the two classes of investor sentiments have a strong significant effect on the U.S. stock market returns. The response of the U.S. to individual investor sentiments is relatively more erratic, while the response to institutional investor sentiments is smoother. This difference in pattern becomes more visible when we consider the response of the foreign stock markets. We find significant effects of rational sentiments of institutional investors on the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil. However, there is an insignificant effect of the irrational sentiments on the same set of countries. A direct implication of our empirical evidence is that it is important for international asset pricing models to consider the role of rational sentiments of institutional and individual investors on developed and emerging markets.

Individual Investor Sentiment and Long-Run Performance of IPOs

This paper examines whether intense individual investor sentiment leads to poor long-run IPO performance in the U.S. market. Using order imbalance for small trades on the IPO day to proxy for individual investor sentiment for IPOs issued between 1994 and 2002, we find that there is a negative relation between individual investor sentiment and long-run IPO performance for IPOs issued during the 1999-2000 internet bubble period but not for the non-bubble period. The empirical results are robust for returns measured both in event-time and in calendar-time. Our findings are consistent with existing theoretical models claiming that the negative sentiment-return relation applies when there is a large pool of bullish individual investors in a hot IPO market.