English

Investor Emotions and Earnings Announcements

Portfolio Management 2020-06-29 v2 Machine Learning General Economics Economics General Finance

Abstract

Armed with a decade of social media data, I explore the impact of investor emotions on earnings announcements. In particular, I test whether the emotional content of firm-specific messages posted on social media just prior to a firm's earnings announcement predicts its earnings and announcement returns. I find that investors are typically excited about firms that end up exceeding expectations, yet their enthusiasm results in lower announcement returns. Specifically, a standard deviation increase in excitement is associated with an 7.8 basis points lower announcement return, which translates into an approximately -5.8% annualized loss. My findings confirm that emotions and market dynamics are closely related and highlight the importance of considering investor emotions when assessing a firm's short-term value.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.13934,
  title  = {Investor Emotions and Earnings Announcements},
  author = {Domonkos F. Vamossy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.13934},
  year   = {2020}
}