TY  - JOUR
AU  - Baker,Malcolm
AU  - Wurgler,Jeffrey
TI  - Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13189
PY  - 2007
Y2  - June 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13189
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13189.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Malcolm Baker
Baker Library 261
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA  02163
Tel: 617/495-6566
Fax: 617/496-5271
E-Mail: mbaker@hbs.edu

Jeffrey Wurgler
Stern School of Business, Suite 9-190
New York University
44 West 4th Street
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-0367
Fax: 212/995-4233
E-Mail: jwurgler@stern.nyu.edu
AB  - Real investors and markets are too complicated to be neatly summarized by a few selected biases and trading frictions. The "top down" approach to behavioral finance focuses on the measurement of reduced form, aggregate sentiment and traces its effects to stock returns. It builds on the two broader and more irrefutable assumptions of behavioral finance -- sentiment and the limits to arbitrage -- to explain which stocks are likely to be most affected by sentiment. In particular, stocks of low capitalization, younger, unprofitable, high volatility, non-dividend paying, growth companies, or stocks of firms in financial distress, are likely to be disproportionately sensitive to broad waves of investor sentiment. We review the theoretical and empirical evidence for these predictions.
ER  -