How Does Investor Sentiment Affect the Cross-Section of Stock Returns?

Malcolm Baker, Johnathan Wang and Jeffrey Wurgler

Volume 6, Number 2, Second Quarter 2008

Broad waves of investor sentiment should have larger impacts on securities that are more difficult to value and to arbitrage. Consistent with this intuition, we find that when an index of investor sentiment takes low values, small, young, high volatility, unprofitable, non-dividend paying, extreme growth, and distressed stocks earn relatively higher subsequent returns. When sentiment is high, the aforementioned categories of stocks earn relatively lower subsequent returns.