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Stock returns and investors' mood: Good day sunshine or spurious correlation?

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  • Kim, Jae H.

Abstract

This paper critically evaluates the significant weather effect on stock return reported in two seminal studies of investors' mood on stock market. It is found that their research design of maximizing statistical power by pooling as many data points as possible is statistically flawed, with a consequence that the test is severely biased against the null hypothesis of no effect. Coupled with small effect size estimates and test statistics inflated by massive sample sizes, this strongly suggests spurious statistical significance as an outcome of Type I error. The alternatives to the p-value criterion for statistical significance soundly support the null hypothesis of no weather effect. As an application, the effect of daily sunspot numbers on stock return is examined. Under the same research design as that of a seminal study, the number of sunspots is found to be highly statistically significant although its economic impact on stock return is negligible.

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  • Kim, Jae H., 2017. "Stock returns and investors' mood: Good day sunshine or spurious correlation?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 94-103.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:52:y:2017:i:c:p:94-103
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2017.05.004
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    Cited by:

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    2. Jae H. Kim & Kamran Ahmed & Philip Inyeob Ji, 2018. "Significance Testing in Accounting Research: A Critical Evaluation Based on Evidence," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 54(4), pages 524-546, December.
    3. Jae H. Kim & Andrew P. Robinson, 2019. "Interval-Based Hypothesis Testing and Its Applications to Economics and Finance," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-22, May.
    4. Polyzos, Stathis & Samitas, Aristeidis & Katsaiti, Marina-Selini, 2020. "Who is unhappy for Brexit? A machine-learning, agent-based study on financial instability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    5. Filiz, Ibrahim & Nahmer, Thomas & Spiwoks, Markus, 2019. "Herd behavior and mood: An experimental study on the forecasting of share prices," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    6. Wang, Hanjie & Feil, Jan-Henning & Yu, Xiaohua, 2021. "Disagreement on sunspots and soybeans futures price," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 385-393.
    7. Liu, Huajin & Zhang, Wei & Zhang, Xiaotao & Liu, Jia, 2021. "Temperature and trading behaviours," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    8. Kim, Jae H. & Shamsuddin, Abul, 2023. "Stock market anomalies: An extreme bounds analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    9. Lucian Liviu ALBU & Radu LUPU & Adrian Cantemir CĂLIN & Iulia LUPU, 2019. "Nonlinear Modeling of Financial Stability Using Default Probabilities from the Capital Market," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(1), pages 19-37, March.
    10. Ngoc Bao Vuong & Yoshihisa Suzuki, 2022. "The Moderating Effect of Market-Specific Factors on the Return Predictability of Investor Sentiment," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(3), pages 21582440221, July.
    11. Zhou Tianbao & Li Xinghao & Zhao Junguang, 2022. "Solar Term Anomaly in China Stock Market: Evidence from Shanghai Index," Papers 2203.12603, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.
    12. Ahmed Bouteska & Taimur Sharif & Mohammad Zoynul Abedin, 2024. "Does investor sentiment create value for asset pricing? An empirical investigation of the KOSPI‐listed firms," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 3487-3509, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Anomaly; Data mining; Market efficiency; Sunspot numbers; Weather effect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

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