IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0067721.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Being on the Field When the Game Is Still Under Way. The Financial Press and Stock Markets in Times of Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Roberto Casarin
  • Flaminio Squazzoni

Abstract

This paper looks at the relationship between negative news and stock markets in times of global crisis, such as the 2008/2009 period. We analysed one year of front page banner headlines of three financial newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Il Sole24ore to examine the influence of bad news both on stock market volatility and dynamic correlation. Our results show that the press and markets influenced each other in generating market volatility and in particular, that the Wall Street Journal had a crucial effect both on the volatility and correlation between the US and foreign markets. We also found significant differences between newspapers in their interpretation of the crisis, with the Financial Times being significantly pessimistic even in phases of low market volatility. Our results confirm the reflexive nature of stock markets. When the situation is uncertain and unpredictable, market behaviour may even reflect qualitative, big picture, and subjective information such as streamers in a newspaper, whose economic and informative value is questionable.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberto Casarin & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2013. "Being on the Field When the Game Is Still Under Way. The Financial Press and Stock Markets in Times of Crisis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-14, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0067721
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0067721
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0067721
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0067721&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0067721?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jordi Mondria & Climent Quintana‐Domeque, 2013. "Financial Contagion and Attention Allocation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(568), pages 429-454, May.
    2. Pritamani, Mahesh & Singal, Vijay, 2001. "Return predictability following large price changes and information releases," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 631-656, April.
    3. Dror Y Kenett & Matthias Raddant & Thomas Lux & Eshel Ben-Jacob, 2012. "Evolvement of Uniformity and Volatility in the Stressed Global Financial Village," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(2), pages 1-8, February.
    4. Pearce, Douglas K & Roley, V Vance, 1985. "Stock Prices and Economic News," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 49-67, January.
    5. Cipriani Marco & Guarino Antonio, 2008. "Herd Behavior and Contagion in Financial Markets," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-56, October.
    6. Barber, Brad M. & Loeffler, Douglas, 1993. "The “Dartboard” Column: Second-Hand Information and Price Pressure," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 273-284, June.
    7. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(2), pages 215-268, November.
    8. Chiang, Thomas C. & Jeon, Bang Nam & Li, Huimin, 2007. "Dynamic correlation analysis of financial contagion: Evidence from Asian markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(7), pages 1206-1228, November.
    9. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    10. Oberlechner, Thomas & Hocking, Sam, 2004. "Information sources, news, and rumors in financial markets: Insights into the foreign exchange market," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 407-424, June.
    11. Paul C. Tetlock, 2011. "All the News That's Fit to Reprint: Do Investors React to Stale Information?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(5), pages 1481-1512.
    12. Liu, Pu & Smith, Stanley D. & Syed, Azmat A., 1990. "Stock Price Reactions to The Wall Street Journal's Securities Recommendations," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 399-410, September.
    13. Alessandro Beber & Michael W. Brandt, 2010. "When It Cannot Get Better or Worse: The Asymmetric Impact of Good and Bad News on Bond Returns in Expansions and Recessions," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 14(1), pages 119-155.
    14. Yiuman Tse, 1999. "Price discovery and volatility spillovers in the DJIA index and futures markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 911-930, December.
    15. Joseph E. Engelberg & Christopher A. Parsons, 2011. "The Causal Impact of Media in Financial Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 67-97, February.
    16. Veronesi, Pietro, 1999. "Stock Market Overreaction to Bad News in Good Times: A Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(5), pages 975-1007.
    17. Engle, Robert F & Ng, Victor K, 1993. "Measuring and Testing the Impact of News on Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1749-1778, December.
    18. Engle, Robert, 2002. "Dynamic Conditional Correlation: A Simple Class of Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(3), pages 339-350, July.
    19. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2001. "Is Sound Just Noise?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1887-1910, October.
    20. Paul C. Tetlock, 2010. "Does Public Financial News Resolve Asymmetric Information?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(9), pages 3520-3557.
    21. Paul C. Tetlock & Maytal Saar‐Tsechansky & Sofus Macskassy, 2008. "More Than Words: Quantifying Language to Measure Firms' Fundamentals," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1437-1467, June.
    22. John M. Griffin & Nicholas H. Hirschey & Patrick J. Kelly, 2011. "How Important Is the Financial Media in Global Markets?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(12), pages 3941-3992.
    23. François Longin & Bruno Solnik, 2001. "Extreme Correlation of International Equity Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 649-676, April.
    24. Riccardo Boero & Giangiacomo Bravo & Marco Castellani & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2010. "Why Bother with What Others Tell You? An Experimental Data-Driven Agent-Based Model," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 13(3), pages 1-6.
    25. Koutmos, Gregory & Booth, G Geoffrey, 1995. "Asymmetric volatility transmission in international stock markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 747-762, December.
    26. Tambini, Damian, 2010. "What are financial journalists for?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28840, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    27. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Elton, Edwin J. & Green, T. Clifton, 2001. "Economic News and Bond Prices: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 523-543, December.
    28. Alex Preda, 2007. "The Sociological Approach To Financial Markets," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 506-533, July.
    29. 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.
    30. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1259-1294 is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Suk-Joong Kim & Jeffrey Sheen, 2018. "Minute-by-Minute Dynamics of the Australian Bond Futures Market in Response to New Macroeconomic Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Information Spillovers and Market Integration in International Finance Empirical Analyses, chapter 7, pages 203-227, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    32. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    33. Granger, C W J, 1969. "Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 424-438, July.
    34. Casey Dougal & Joseph Engelberg & Diego García & Christopher A. Parsons, 2012. "Journalists and the Stock Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(3), pages 639-679.
    35. Brenner, Menachem & Pasquariello, Paolo & Subrahmanyam, Marti, 2009. "On the Volatility and Comovement of U.S. Financial Markets around Macroeconomic News Announcements," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(6), pages 1265-1289, December.
    36. Koutmos, Gregory, 1998. "Asymmetries in the Conditional Mean and the Conditional Variance: Evidence From Nine Stock Markets," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 277-290, May.
    37. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 1999. "Risk Management with Interdependent Choice," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 15(3), pages 52-62, Autumn.
    38. Engle, Robert F, 1982. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of the Variance of United Kingdom Inflation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 987-1007, July.
    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. Raphael H Heiberger, 2015. "Collective Attention and Stock Prices: Evidence from Google Trends Data on Standard and Poor's 100," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-14, August.
    2. Costola, Michele & Hinz, Oliver & Nofer, Michael & Pelizzon, Loriana, 2023. "Machine learning sentiment analysis, COVID-19 news and stock market reactions," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    3. Niccolò Casnici & Pierpaolo Dondio & Roberto Casarin & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2015. "Decrypting Financial Markets through E-Joint Attention Efforts: On-Line Adaptive Networks of Investors in Periods of Market Uncertainty," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-15, August.
    4. Diamantis Petropoulos Petalas & Hein van Schie & Paul Hendriks Vettehen, 2017. "Forecasted economic change and the self-fulfilling prophecy in economic decision-making," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-18, March.
    5. Matija Piv{s}korec & Nino Antulov-Fantulin & Petra Kralj Novak & Igor Mozetiv{c} & Miha Grv{c}ar & Irena Vodenska & Tomislav v{S}muc, 2014. "News Cohesiveness: an Indicator of Systemic Risk in Financial Markets," Papers 1402.3483, arXiv.org.
    6. Julian Ashwin & Eleni Kalamara & Lorena Saiz, 2024. "Nowcasting Euro area GDP with news sentiment: A tale of two crises," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 887-905, August.
    7. Yan, Shuang & Gu, Changgui & Yang, Huijie, 2024. "Bridge successive states for a complex system with evolutionary matrix," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 637(C).
    8. Anastasia Kazun, 2019. "To cover or not to cover: Alexei Navalny in Russian media," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 22(4), pages 312-326, December.
    9. Marco Castellani & Linda Alengoz & Niccolò Casnici & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2022. "A role-game laboratory experiment on the influence of country prospects reports on investment decisions in two artificial organizational settings," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 21(1), pages 121-149, June.

    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. Roberto Casarin & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2012. "Financial press and stock markets in times of crisis," Working Papers 2012_04, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    2. Feipeng Zhang & Yun Hong & Yanhui Jiang & Jiayi Yu, 2022. "Impact of national media reporting concerning COVID-19 on stock market in China: empirical evidence from a quantile regression," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(33), pages 3861-3881, July.
    3. Ammann, Manuel & Frey, Roman & Verhofen, Michael, 2012. "Do Newspaper Articles Predict Aggregate Stock Returns?," Working Papers on Finance 1204, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    4. Tom Marty & Bruce Vanstone & Tobias Hahn, 2020. "News media analytics in finance: a survey," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(2), pages 1385-1434, June.
    5. Betton, Sandra & Davis, Frederick & Walker, Thomas, 2018. "Rumor rationales: The impact of message justification on article credibility," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 271-287.
    6. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Spagnolo, Fabio & Spagnolo, Nicola, 2016. "Macro news and stock returns in the Euro area: A VAR-GARCH-in-mean analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 180-188.
    7. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp1508 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Laura Xiaolei Liu & Ann E. Sherman & Yong Zhang, 2014. "The Long-Run Role of the Media: Evidence from Initial Public Offerings," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 1945-1964, August.
    9. Oleg Chuprinin & Massimo Massa & Bastian von Beschwitz, 2015. "Why Do Short Sellers Like Qualitative News?," International Finance Discussion Papers 1149, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Angelos J. Doukas & Jie (Michael) Guo & Herbert Y. T. Lam & Sarah (Hong) Xiao, 2016. "Media Endorsements of New Product Announcements: A New Marketing Strategy," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 22(3), pages 394-426, June.
    11. Frank, Murray Z. & Sanati, Ali, 2018. "How does the stock market absorb shocks?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 136-153.
    12. Nyman, Rickard & Kapadia, Sujit & Tuckett, David, 2021. "News and narratives in financial systems: Exploiting big data for systemic risk assessment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    13. Jin, Xuejun & Chen, Cheng & Yang, Xiaolan, 2024. "The effect of international media news on the global stock market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 50-69.
    14. Gupta, Kartick & Banerjee, Rajabrata, 2019. "Does OPEC news sentiment influence stock returns of energy firms in the United States?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 34-45.
    15. Call, Andrew C. & Emett, Scott A. & Maksymov, Eldar & Sharp, Nathan Y., 2022. "Meet the press: Survey evidence on financial journalists as information intermediaries," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2).
    16. Ho, Kin-Yip & Shi, Yanlin & Zhang, Zhaoyong, 2013. "How does news sentiment impact asset volatility? Evidence from long memory and regime-switching approaches," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 436-456.
    17. repec:dau:papers:123456789/6804 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Rambaccussing, Dooruj & Kwiatkowski, Andrzej, 2020. "Forecasting with news sentiment: Evidence with UK newspapers," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1501-1516.
    19. Buehlmaier, Matthias M. M. & Zechner, Josef, 2016. "Financial media, price discovery, and merger arbitrage," CFS Working Paper Series 551, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    20. von Beschwitz, Bastian & Chuprinin, Oleg & Massa, Massimo, 2017. "Why Do Short Sellers Like Qualitative News?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 645-675, April.
    21. Rui Fan & Oleksandr Talavera & Vu Tran, 2020. "Social media bots and stock markets," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 26(3), pages 753-777, June.
    22. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Fabio Spagnolo & Nicola Spagnolo, 2017. "Macro News and Commodity Returns," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 68-80, January.

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0067721. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.