We use a text-based measure of popular sentiment toward finance to study how finance sentiment responds to rare historical disasters and to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Finance sentiment declines after epidemics and earthquakes, but rises following severe droughts, floods, and landslides....

We construct a text-based measure of uncertainty starting in 1890 using front-page articles of the Wall Street Journal. News implied volatility (NVIX) peaks during stock market crashes, times of policy-related uncertainty, world wars and financial crises. In US post-war data, periods when NVIX...