Beliefs and Stock Market Fluctuations: New Evidence from the Past Seven Decades

For valuable feedback, we thank Nick Barberis, John Campbell, Sebastian Hillenbrand, Eben Lazarus, Felix von Meyerinck, Stefan Nagel, and Adrien Verdelhan, as well as seminar participants at CFM, Dartmouth, Harvard, Helsinki Finance Seminar, MIT, NYU, UNC, and the Q Group Spring Seminar 2026. We thank Jenna Wang, Paul Dai, and, especially, Trang Do for outstanding research assistance. We are also grateful to Shikha Sharma and the MIT Library for assistance with accessing and scanning the microfilm records of the \textit{Value Line Investment Survey} and Francesco Fabozzi for sharing the latest data from the Robert Shiller Investor Confidence survey. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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