The impact of investor sentiment on the "leverage effect"

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet and the availability of user search query data on a broaderscale, since the early 2000s researchers have started using collective search queryinformation instead of, or, in addition to, traditional investor sentiment proxies. Thisstudy examines whether the leverage (bad news) effect, as measured by theEGARCH (1,1) model, changes with the inclusion of a newly emerging sentiment proxy,internet search volume. The sample consists of 14 US companies belonging to theNASDAQ and NYSE Indices and 501 observations of data collected at weekly frequencyspanning a nine year period. Empirical findings suggest that, inclusion of the investorsentiment variable has no clear impact on the bad news effect; there is, however, adiscernible increase in volatility persistence. The implications of the findings are that theinvestor sentiment proxy has additional informational content. Behavioral finance theoryand the availability and social proof heuristics serve as potential explanations for suchfindings.