Celebrities and ordinaries in social networks: Who knows more information?

Yongjie Zhang, Yahui An, Xu Feng and Xi Jin

Finance Research Letters, 2017, vol. 20, issue C, 153-161

Abstract: This paper tests the information contained in messages that various types of users post on social networks. Our data come from Sina Weibo, the biggest social network in China. The users are classified as either celebrities or ordinaries. We find that postings from celebrities significantly predict stock returns, whereas postings from ordinaries have no predictive power. Furthermore, postings from celebrities contain more future public information and current private information. Ordinaries’ postings contain only stale information. The event study suggests that ordinaries can be considered as information followers rather than providers. These results are consistent with the informed guru hypothesis.

Keywords: Gurus; Social network; Information; Online postings; Stock price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G12 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finlet:v:20:y:2017:i:c:p:153-161

DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2016.09.021

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