The Availability Heuristic and Reversals Following Large Stock Price Changes

Andrey Kudryavtsev

Journal of Behavioral Finance, 2018, vol. 19, issue 2, 159-176

Abstract: The author explores the effect of the availability heuristic on large daily stock price changes and on subsequent stock returns. He hypothesizes that if a major positive (negative) stock price move takes place on a day when the stock market index rises (falls), then its magnitude may be amplified by the availability of positive (negative) investment outcomes. In both cases, the availability heuristic may cause price overreaction to the initial company-specific shock, resulting in subsequent price reversal. In line with the hypothesis, the author documents that both positive and negative large price moves accompanied by the same-sign contemporaneous daily market returns are followed by significant reversals on the next 2 trading days and over 5- and 20-day intervals following the event, the magnitude of the reversals increasing over longer postevent windows, while large stock price changes taking place on the days when the market index moves in the opposite direction are followed by nonsignificant price drifts. The results remain robust after accounting for additional company (size, beta, historical volatility) and event-specific (stock's return and trading volume on the event day) factors, and are stronger for small and volatile stocks.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15427560.2017.1374276 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:hbhfxx:v:19:y:2018:i:2:p:159-176

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/hbhf20

DOI: 10.1080/15427560.2017.1374276

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral Finance is currently edited by Brian Bruce

More articles in Journal of Behavioral Finance from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().