IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finmar/v42y2019icp94-120.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The convergence and divergence of investors' opinions around earnings news: Evidence from a social network

Author

Listed:
  • Giannini, Robert
  • Irvine, Paul
  • Shu, Tao

Abstract

We collect a unique dataset of Twitter posts to examine the change in investor disagreement around earnings announcements. We find that investors' opinions can either converge (reduced disagreement) or diverge (increased disagreement) around earnings announcements. The convergence and divergence of opinion has significant effects on trading volume and return. Consistent with theoretical predictions, both the convergence and divergence of opinion are associated with a greater volume reaction to earnings news. While the convergence of opinion is associated with lower earnings announcement returns, the divergence of opinion is associated with higher earnings announcement returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Giannini, Robert & Irvine, Paul & Shu, Tao, 2019. "The convergence and divergence of investors' opinions around earnings news: Evidence from a social network," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 94-120.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finmar:v:42:y:2019:i:c:p:94-120
    DOI: 10.1016/j.finmar.2018.12.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386418117300095
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.finmar.2018.12.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karl B. Diether & Christopher J. Malloy & Anna Scherbina, 2002. "Differences of Opinion and the Cross Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2113-2141, October.
    2. Nicky J. Ferguson & Dennis Philip & Herbert Y. T. Lam & Jie Michael Guo, 2015. "Media Content and Stock Returns: The Predictive Power of Press," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 19(1), pages 1-31, March.
    3. Berkman, Henk & Dimitrov, Valentin & Jain, Prem C. & Koch, Paul D. & Tice, Sheri, 2009. "Sell on the news: Differences of opinion, short-sales constraints, and returns around earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 376-399, June.
    4. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2002. "Breadth of ownership and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 171-205.
    5. Carlin, Bruce I. & Longstaff, Francis A. & Matoba, Kyle, 2014. "Disagreement and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 226-238.
    6. Luigi Zingales, 2000. "In Search of New Foundations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1623-1653, August.
    7. Snehal Banerjee & Ilan Kremer, 2010. "Disagreement and Learning: Dynamic Patterns of Trade," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1269-1302, August.
    8. John C. Driscoll & Aart C. Kraay, 1998. "Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimation With Spatially Dependent Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 549-560, November.
    9. Dechow, Patricia & Ge, Weili & Schrand, Catherine, 2010. "Understanding earnings quality: A review of the proxies, their determinants and their consequences," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 344-401, December.
    10. Simon Gervais & Ron Kaniel & Dan H. Mingelgrin, 2001. "The High‐Volume Return Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 877-919, June.
    11. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:6:p:1839-1885 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Peter M. DeMarzo & Dimitri Vayanos & Jeffrey Zwiebel, 2003. "Persuasion Bias, Social Influence, and Unidimensional Opinions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 909-968.
    13. Almazan, Andres & Brown, Keith C. & Carlson, Murray & Chapman, David A., 2004. "Why constrain your mutual fund manager?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 289-321, August.
    14. Hendershott, Terrence & Livdan, Dmitry & Schürhoff, Norman, 2015. "Are institutions informed about news?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 249-287.
    15. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Wu, Di, 2013. "Word power: A new approach for content analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 712-729.
    16. Nagel, Stefan, 2005. "Short sales, institutional investors and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 277-309, November.
    17. Jon A. Garfinkel & Jonathan Sokobin, 2006. "Volume, Opinion Divergence, and Returns: A Study of Post–Earnings Announcement Drift," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 85-112, March.
    18. Campbell, Cynthia J & Wasley, Charles E, 1996. "Measuring Abnormal Daily Trading Volume for Samples of NYSE/ASE and NASDAQ Securities Using Parametric and Nonparametric Test Statistics," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 309-326, May.
    19. Ferhat Akbas, 2016. "The Calm before the Storm," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(1), pages 225-266, February.
    20. Miller, Edward M, 1977. "Risk, Uncertainty, and Divergence of Opinion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1151-1168, September.
    21. Kim, O & Verrecchia, Re, 1991. "Trading Volume And Price Reactions To Public Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 302-321.
    22. Varian, Hal R, 1985. "Divergence of Opinion in Complete Markets: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 309-317, March.
    23. Alexander Hillert & Heiko Jacobs & Sebastian Müller, 2014. "Media Makes Momentum," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(12), pages 3467-3501.
    24. Paul C. Tetlock, 2007. "Giving Content to Investor Sentiment: The Role of Media in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1139-1168, June.
    25. Lily Fang & Joel Peress, 2009. "Media Coverage and the Cross‐section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2023-2052, October.
    26. Karpoff, Jonathan M, 1986. "A Theory of Trading Volume," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(5), pages 1069-1087, December.
    27. Hailiang Chen & Prabuddha De & Yu (Jeffrey) Hu & Byoung-Hyoun Hwang, 2014. "Wisdom of Crowds: The Value of Stock Opinions Transmitted Through Social Media," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(5), pages 1367-1403.
    28. Feng Li, 2010. "The Information Content of Forward‐Looking Statements in Corporate Filings—A Naïve Bayesian Machine Learning Approach," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5), pages 1049-1102, December.
    29. Bamber, Linda Smith & Barron, Orie E. & Stober, Thomas L., 1999. "Differential Interpretations and Trading Volume," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(3), pages 369-386, September.
    30. Abarbanell, Jeffery S. & Lanen, William N. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1995. "Analysts' forecasts as proxies for investor beliefs in empirical research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 31-60, July.
    31. Doukas, John A. & Kim, Chansog (Francis) & Pantzalis, Christos, 2006. "Divergence of Opinion and Equity Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 573-606, September.
    32. Linda Smith Bamber & Orie E. Barron & Douglas E. Stevens, 2011. "Trading Volume Around Earnings Announcements and Other Financial Reports: Theory, Research Design, Empirical Evidence, and Directions for Future Research," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(2), pages 431-471, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fan, Rui & Talavera, Oleksandr & Tran, Vu, 2023. "Information flows and the law of one price," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    2. Alina Lerman, 2020. "Individual Investors' Attention to Accounting Information: Evidence from Online Financial Communities," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(4), pages 2020-2057, December.
    3. Ding, Rong & Zhou, Hang & Li, Yifan, 2020. "Social media, financial reporting opacity, and return comovement: Evidence from Seeking Alpha," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    4. Li, Xing & Hou, Keqiang, 2024. "Investors' opinion disagreement and abnormal trading around pre-earnings announcements," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    5. repec:hal:journl:hal-04660083 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Rui Fan & Oleksandr Talavera & Vu Tran, 2020. "Social media, political uncertainty, and stock markets," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1137-1153, October.
    7. Yang, Xiaolan & Zhu, Yu & Cheng, Teng Yuan, 2020. "How the individual investors took on big data: The effect of panic from the internet stock message boards on stock price crash," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    8. Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Antonin Macé & Adam Meirowitz & Shaoting Pi & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2023. "Public Information as a Source of Disagreement Among Shareholders," PSE Working Papers halshs-04075483, HAL.
    9. Zhang, Xiaoying & Lin, Ling & Xiao, Min & Yang, Jing, 2024. "Do auditors care about what retail investors say? Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    10. Mahmoudi, Nader & Docherty, Paul & Melia, Adrian, 2022. "Firm-level investor sentiment and corporate announcement returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    11. Liang, Chao & Tang, Linchun & Li, Yan & Wei, Yu, 2020. "Which sentiment index is more informative to forecast stock market volatility? Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    12. Zhang, Tonghui & Yuan, Ying & Wu, Xi, 2020. "Is microblogging data reflected in stock market volatility? Evidence from Sina Weibo," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    13. Qing Liu & Hosung Son, 2024. "Data selection and collection for constructing investor sentiment from social media," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    14. Cookson, J. Anthony & Niessner, Marina & Schiller, Christoph M., 2022. "Can Social Media Inform Corporate Decisions? Evidence from Merger Withdrawals," SocArXiv 56yrj, Center for Open Science.
    15. Daniele Ballinari & Simon Behrendt, 2021. "How to gauge investor behavior? A comparison of online investor sentiment measures," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 169-204, June.
    16. Yongan Xu & Jianqiong Wang & Zhonglu Chen & Chao Liang, 2023. "Sentiment indices and stock returns: Evidence from China," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 1063-1080, January.
    17. Zhang, Zuochao & Goodell, John W. & Shen, Dehua & Lahmar, Oumaima, 2024. "Media opinion divergence and stock returns: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Al-Nasseri, Alya & Menla Ali, Faek, 2018. "What does investors' online divergence of opinion tell us about stock returns and trading volume?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 166-178.
    2. Li, Xing & Hou, Keqiang, 2024. "Investors' opinion disagreement and abnormal trading around pre-earnings announcements," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    3. Zhang, Zuochao & Goodell, John W. & Shen, Dehua & Lahmar, Oumaima, 2024. "Media opinion divergence and stock returns: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    4. Sheng, Xuguang (Simon) & Thevenot, Maya, 2015. "Quantifying differential interpretation of public information using financial analysts’ earnings forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 515-530.
    5. Hillert, Alexander & Jacobs, Heiko & Müller, Sebastian, 2018. "Journalist disagreement," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 57-76.
    6. Anzhela Knyazeva & Diana Knyazeva & Leonard Kostovetsky, 2018. "Investor heterogeneity and trading," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 24(4), pages 680-718, September.
    7. Xuguang Sheng & Maya Thevenot, 2013. "Differential Interpretation of Public Information: Estimation and Inference," Working Papers 2013-03, American University, Department of Economics.
    8. D’Augusta, Carlo & De Vito, Antonio & Grossetti, Francesco, 2023. "Words and numbers: A disagreement story from post-earnings announcement return and volume patterns," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    9. Liu, Sha & Han, Jingguang, 2020. "Media tone and expected stock returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Carlo D'Augusta & Sasson Bar-Yosef & Annalisa Prencipe, 2016. "The Effects of Conservative Reporting on Investor Disagreement," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 451-485, September.
    11. Hirota, Shinichi, 2023. "Money supply, opinion dispersion, and stock prices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 1286-1310.
    12. Andreou, Panayiotis C. & Kagkadis, Anastasios & Philip, Dennis & Tuneshev, Ruslan, 2018. "Differences in options investors’ expectations and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 315-336.
    13. Hu, Yingyi & Zhao, Tiao & Zhang, Lin, 2020. "Noise trading, institutional trading, and opinion divergence: Evidence on intraday data in the Chinese stock market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 74-89.
    14. Mark Wong & Adrian Wai Kong Cheung & Wei Hu, 2021. "When two anomalies meet: Volume and timing effects on earnings announcements," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 355-380, May.
    15. Diogo Silva & António Cerqueira, 2021. "Financial Reporting Quality and Investors' Divergence of Opinion†," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(1), pages 79-107, March.
    16. Berkman, Henk & Dimitrov, Valentin & Jain, Prem C. & Koch, Paul D. & Tice, Sheri, 2009. "Sell on the news: Differences of opinion, short-sales constraints, and returns around earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 376-399, June.
    17. Hibbert, Ann Marie & Kang, Qiang & Kumar, Alok & Mishra, Suchi, 2020. "Heterogeneous beliefs and return volatility around seasoned equity offerings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 571-589.
    18. Chen, Tao, 2020. "Does news affect disagreement in global markets?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 174-183.
    19. Akbas, Ferhat & Boehmer, Ekkehart & Jiang, Chao & Koch, Paul D., 2022. "Overnight returns, daytime reversals, and future stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 850-875.
    20. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Investor disagreement; Social media; Divergence of opinion; Convergence of opinion; Trading volume; Stock returns; Earnings announcement;
    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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finmar:v:42:y:2019:i:c:p:94-120. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/finmar .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.