Can sentiments on macroeconomic news explain stock returns? Evidence form social network data

Yingying Xu and Jichang Zhao

International Journal of Finance & Economics, 2022, vol. 27, issue 2, 2073-2088

Abstract: Macroeconomic factors and sentiments affect investors' decisions and thus stock returns. However, do sentiments on macro‐economic news explain stock returns? This article proposes a theoretical model to explain the relationship between stock returns and the market misperception which is driven by investors' sentiments. Then, microblogs regarding the macro‐economy posted on Sina Weibo, a mainstream Chinese Social Network Site, are extracted to measure investors' macroeconomic sentiments (IMSs) through machine learning approaches. A preliminary event study suggests that IMSs capture the development of influential macroeconomic events. Empirical results demonstrate that orthogonalized IMSs including anger, disgust, fear, joy and sadness exert heterogeneously significant effects on the Shanghai Composite Index (SHCI), and no reverse effect is found. Thus, the IMS contains additional information related to the macro‐economy; but cannot be explained by macroeconomic factors. IMSs improve the in‐ and out‐of‐sample predictabilities of SHCI returns. Thereby, investors' sentiment can be an important channel through which the macro‐economy affects the stock market.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.2260

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:ijfiec:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:2073-2088

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://jws-edcv.wile ... PRINT_ISSN=1076-9307

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Finance & Economics is currently edited by Mark P. Taylor, Keith Cuthbertson and Michael P. Dooley

More articles in International Journal of Finance & Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().