The effects of sentiment should be strongest during times of heightened valuation uncertainty. As such, we document a significant amplifying role for market uncertainty in the relation between sentiment and aggregate investment. A one-standard-deviation increase in uncertainty more than doubles...

Why don't non-financial companies in Europe issue more equity? Using experimental data on firms from Europe, this paper analyses how firms trade-off between debt and external equity financing. It finds that firms are willing to pay a substantial premium on debt when presented with an equity...

Using case studies of two investment companies, this paper highlights that organizations may have “investment tribes,” i.e., groups of individuals who appear to exhibit similar risk tendencies for gambles involving gains or losses, possibly with a wide spread of risk preferences. Tribes and...

We examine whether grit affects individuals' preferences and trading decisions. Grit is the sustained effort toward a goal despite setbacks. It is malleable and distinct from the Big Five personality traits. Using experiments formalized in prospect theory, we find that grit reduces loss...

Greed has been shown to be an important economic motive. Both the popular press as well as scientific papers have mentioned questionable practices by greedy bankers and investors as one of the root causes of the 2008 global financial crisis. In spite of these suggestions, there is as of yet no...

This study explores the nexus between investors’ sentiments and herding behavior toward the market consensus in the U.S. and Europe stock markets from January, 2005 to April, 2021. We document strong evidence of herding during periods characterized by high level of sentiments. Our results...

The field of behavioural finance points out various investor biases and heuristics which inhibit optimal investment choices and are sometimes deemed irrational. Although emotions are often viewed as anathema to sound financial decisions, there is a big emotional component that has to be taken...

The dynamics of cryptocurrency prices and on-line search about them during the 2016-2018 period reveals a direct/positive mutual feedback relationship during the bubble formation phase that weakened considerably when the prices started to fall. This behavior is prevalent for Bitcoin and...

We form a belief-based equity market sentiment index, BBS, from investors' survey-based expectations of future aggregate stock returns. BBS spans 54 years, accommodates belief heterogeneity across different investor types, and accounts for variation in the participation of these investors in the...

This working paper is written by Nina Klocke (Paderborn University), Daniel Muller (Paderborn University), Tim Hasso (Bond University) and Matthias Pelster (Paderborn University).This paper studies the impact of social interactions on investors’ trading behaviour and risk-taking. We analyse a...