This paper sheds empirical light on whether sentiment affects the profitability of price momentum strategies. We hypothesize that news that contradicts investors' sentiment causes cognitive dissonance, which slows the diffusion of signals that oppose the direction of sentiment. This phenomenon...

The security market line (SML) accords with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) by taking on an upward slope in pessimistic sentiment periods, but is downward sloping during optimistic periods. We hypothesize that this finding obtains because periods of optimism attract equity investment by...

We examine whether the managers of equity mutual funds exhibit reinforcement learning, investing more heavily in firms in which they previously experienced higher returns. The results reliably support this hypothesis. Experienced returns affect managers' re-balancing decisions in response to...