INFORMATION IN THE FINANCIAL NEWS: EFFECT OF MARKET COMMENTARY ON STOCK MARKET PERFORMANCE GIRAY, Aynur MBA, Department of Business Administration Supervisor: Dr. Seza Danisoglu September 2012, 72 pages This paper studies the effect of investment sentiment on asset prices. A sentiment proxy is calculated by performing content analysis on the Wall Street Journal&lsquo / s

INFORMATION IN THE FINANCIAL NEWS: EFFECT OF MARKET COMMENTARY ON STOCK MARKET PERFORMANCE GIRAY, Aynur MBA, Department of Business Administration Supervisor: Dr. Seza Danisoglu September 2012, 73 pages This paper studies the effect of investment sentiment on asset prices. A sentiment proxy is calculated by performing content analysis on the Wall Street Journal&lsquo / s

INFORMATION IN THE FINANCIAL NEWS: EFFECT OF MARKET COMMENTARY ON STOCK MARKET PERFORMANCE GIRAY, Aynur MBA, Department of Business Administration Supervisor: Dr. Seza Danisoglu September 2012, 73 pages This paper studies the effect of investment sentiment on asset prices. A sentiment proxy is calculated by performing content analysis on the Wall Street Journal&lsquo / s

A large body of literature has explored that investor sentiment and customer satisfaction have been viewed as important metrics to evaluate asset prices, little attention has been paid to whether investor sentiment influence the impact of customer satisfaction on stock returns. This paper examines whether customer-based portfolios can create abnormal returns by employing different risk-adjusted models in different sentiment states. This study finds that portfolio composed of firms with better customer satisfaction can continuously beat the benchmark index and create abnormal returns when adopting different risk-adjusted models. Furthermore, portfolio with better customer satisfaction can significantly outperform the market even in pessimistic and neutral investor sentiment state. This is because of higher CS firms can create stable business cash flows, alleviate customer complaints and strengthen customer loyalty, which will create insurance-like protection for firms in pessimistic investor state, which results in significant abnormal returns even in pessimistic investor state. These results suggest that customer-based metrics are valuable information that should be included in financial models.

We examine how investor sentiment affects the changes in implied volatility, and discover investor sentiment has impact on the size of the changes in implied volatility through returns, especially when returns are negative. We examine the short-tern relation between the S&P 500 index returns and the changes of VIX from January 1990 to January 2011, and between the NASDAQ-100 index returns and the changes of VXN from February 2001 to January 2011 with proxy for beginning-of-period investor sentiment at both the daily and weekly level. We find that during high sentiment periods, the negative and asymmetric relation of return to changes in implied volatility can be mitigated significantly. When returns are segregated into positive and negative returns, investor sentiment has different impact on the size of changes in implied volatility. In negative returns, investors are more panic than in positive returns, but the panic can be mitigated significantly when investors are in high sentiment. Thus, sentiment can alter the risk attitude of investors and reduce their panic in the future, especially when market has negative performance.

Svenska investmentbolag har historiskt sätt handlats till en substansrabatt och flera av investmentbolagen på Nasdaq Stockholm handlas så än idag. Denna studie undersöker om några av de mest diskuterade och studerade faktorerna inom ämnet har någon effekt på de svenska investmentbolagens substansrabatter. Faktorerna som undersöks i denna studie är förvaltningsavgifter, onoterade innehav, ägarstruktur i investmentbolagen och investor sentiment. För att mäta detta används en multipel regression där dessa faktorer används som oberoende variabler och där den beroende variabeln är substansrabatter. Studien mäter substansrabatter på svenska investmentbolag under tidsperioden 2007 - 2016 och inkluderar 13 stycken investmentbolag på Nasdaq Stockholm. Studiens resultat visar på att faktorerna förvaltningsavgifter och andel onoterade innehav har en signifikant påverkan på substansrabatter. Förvaltningsavgifter har en positiv påverkan på substansrabatter och andelen onoterade innehav i investmentbolagens portföljer har en negativ påverkan på substansrabatter.

I investigate how career concerns influence banking analysts’ forecasts and find that banking analysts issue relatively more optimistic forecasts early in the year and more pessimistic forecasts later in the year for banks who could be their future employers. This pattern is not observed when the same analysts forecast earnings for banks with no equity research departments. Using the Global Settlement as an exogenous shock on career concerns, I show that this forecast pattern is pronounced after the Settlement. Moreover, I find that analysts benefit from this behaviour as analysts that are more biased in their forecasts towards potential future employers are more likely to move to a higher reputation bank. Textual analysis of analyst reports is also valuable due to the private information and analysis conveyed in the text. Second paper therefore examines analyst reports with consistent and conflicting signals in terms of qualitative and quantitative outputs. I find that investors react more strongly when the sentiment and earnings forecast bias are consistent. Interestingly, when the tone of report text does not coincide with the earnings forecast, investors place greater weight on the text rather than the EPS forecasts. I also find that consistent reports with both optimistic sentiment and forecast bias have a strong positive market reaction but they are low in forecast accuracy. Markedly, forecasts with pessimistic sentiment have higher accuracy than those of optimistic sentiment. Hence, pessimistic sentiment is a good indicator of the quality of forecast reports. Finally, in my last paper, I explore whether there is any association between firm-specific investor sentiment and the subsequent tone of firms' quarterly reports. Firm-specific investor sentiment is measured using the methodology from Aboody et al. (2016), which proxies for market confidence relating to a specific firm. Given the potential cost-benefit trade-off in the reporting strategy, I argue and find different responses from managers in their 10-Qs in terms of their investor sentiment. I focus on the tone of optimism, readability and the proportion of uncertain words in the 10-Q filings. For firms with extremely high levels of investor sentiment, managers tend to be more conservative by using less optimistic words to avoid future disappointment. In comparison, in firms with extremely pessimistic investor sentiment, managers tend to use more optimistic and easy to understand language, and minimize their proportion of uncertainty in their 10-Q filings. By doing so, perhaps they are trying to alter their investor sentiment.

The most important factor that affects the decision making process in finance is the risk which is usually measured by variance (total risk) or systematic risk (beta). Since investors' sentiment (whether she is an optimist or pessimist) plays a very important role in the choice of beta measure, any decision made for the same asset within the same time horizon will be different for different individuals. In other words, there will neither be homogeneity of beliefs nor the rational expectation prevalent in the market due to behavioral traits. This dissertation consists of three essays. In the first essay, Investor Sentiment and Intrinsic Stock Prices, a new technical trading strategy is developed using a firm specific individual sentiment measure. This behavioral based trading strategy forecasts a range within which a stock price moves in a particular period and can be used for stock trading. Results show that sample firms trade within a range and show signals as to when to buy or sell. The second essay, Managerial Sentiment and the Value of the Firm, examines the effect of managerial sentiment on the project selection process using net present value criterion and also effect of managerial sentiment on the value of firm. Findings show that high sentiment and low sentiment managers obtain different values for the same firm before and after the acceptance of a project. The last essay, Investor Sentiment and Optimal Portfolio Selection, analyzes how the investor sentiment affects the nature and composition of the optimal portfolio as well as the performance measures. Results suggest that the choice of the investor sentiment completely changes the portfolio composition, i.e., the high sentiment investor will have a completely different choice of assets in the portfolio in comparison with the low sentiment investor. The results indicate the practical application of behavioral model based technical indicators for stock trading. Additional insights developed include the valuation of firms with a behavioral component and the importance of distinguishing portfolio performance based on sentiment factors.

Using an early warning system (EWS) methodology, this thesis analyses the predictability of stock market crises from the perspective of behavioural fnance. Specifcally, in our EWS based on the multinomial logit model, we consider in- vestor sentiment as one of the potential crisis indicators. Identifcation of the relevant crisis indicators is based on Bayesian model averaging. The empir- ical results reveal that price-earnings ratio, short-term interest rate, current account, credit growth, as well as investor sentiment proxies are the most rele- vant indicators for anticipating stock market crises within a one-year horizon. Our thesis hence provides evidence that investor sentiment proxies should be a part of the routinely considered variables in the EWS literature. In general, the predictive power of our EWS model as evaluated by both in-sample and out-of-sample performance is promising. JEL Classifcation G01, G02, G17, G41 Keywords Stock market crises, Early warning system, In- vestor sentiment, Crisis prediction, Bayesian model averaging Title Predicting stock market crises using investor sentiment indicators

Yes / We assess the impact of investor sentiment on future stock returns in 50 global stock markets. Using the consumer confidence index (CCI) as the sentiment proxy, we document a negative relationship between investor sentiment and future stock returns at the global level. While the separation between developed and emerging markets does not disrupt the negative pattern, investor sentiment has a more instant impact in emerging markets, but a more enduring impact in developed markets. Individual stock markets reveal heterogeneity in the sentiment-return relationship. This heterogeneity can be explained by cross-market differences in culture and institutions, along with intelligence and education, to varying degrees influenced by the extent of individual investor market participation.