IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sfi/sfiwpa/500062.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Experts' earning forecasts: bias, herding and gossamer information

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Guedj

    (Capital Fund Management)

  • Jean-Philippe Bouchaud

    (Science & Finance, Capital Fund Management
    CEA Saclay;)

Abstract

We study the statistics of earning forecasts of US, EU, UK and JP stocks during the period 1987-2004. We confirm, on this large data set, that financial analysts are on average over-optimistic and show a pronounced herding behavior. These effects are time dependent, and were particularly strong in the early nineties and during the Internet bubble. We furthermore find that their forecast ability is, in relative terms, quite poor and comparable in quality, a year ahead, to the simplest `no change' forecast. As a result of herding, analysts agree with each other five to ten times more than with the actual result. We have shown that significant differences exist between US stocks and EU stocks, that may partly be explained as a company size effect. Interestingly, herding effects appear to be stronger in the US than in the Eurozone. Finally, we study the correlation of errors across stocks and show that significant sectorization occurs, some sectors being easier to predict than others. These results add to the list of arguments suggesting that the tenets of Efficient Market Theory are untenable.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Guedj & Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, 2004. "Experts' earning forecasts: bias, herding and gossamer information," Science & Finance (CFM) working paper archive 500062, Science & Finance, Capital Fund Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:sfi:sfiwpa:500062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Yuval Gefen & Marc Potters & Matthieu Wyart, 2003. "Fluctuations and response in financial markets: the subtle nature of `random' price changes," Papers cond-mat/0307332, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2003.
    2. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Yuval Gefen & Marc Potters & Matthieu Wyart, 2004. "Fluctuations and response in financial markets: the subtle nature of 'random' price changes," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 176-190.
    3. Alan Kirman, 1999. "Interaction and markets," Chapters, in: Mauro Gallegati & Alan Kirman (ed.), Beyond the Representative Agent, chapter 1, pages 1-44, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    5. Shleifer, Andrei, 2000. "Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292272.
    6. Trueman, Brett, 1994. "Analyst Forecasts and Herding Behavior," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 7(1), pages 97-124.
    7. Alan Kirman, 1993. "Ants, Rationality, and Recruitment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(1), pages 137-156.
    8. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985. "Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July.
    9. Harrison Hong & Jeffrey D. Kubik & Amit Solomon, 2000. "Security Analysts' Career Concerns and Herding of Earnings Forecasts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(1), pages 121-144, Spring.
    10. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    11. Wyart, Matthieu & Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe, 2007. "Self-referential behaviour, overreaction and conventions in financial markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-24, May.
    12. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    13. Terrance Odean, 1999. "Do Investors Trade Too Much?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1279-1298, December.
    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. Veglio, A. & Marsili, M., 2007. "Stochastic analysis of an agent-based model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 385(2), pages 631-636.

    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. Didier SORNETTE, 2014. "Physics and Financial Economics (1776-2014): Puzzles, Ising and Agent-Based Models," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 14-25, Swiss Finance Institute.
    2. D. Sornette, 2014. "Physics and Financial Economics (1776-2014): Puzzles, Ising and Agent-Based models," Papers 1404.0243, arXiv.org.
    3. Wyart, Matthieu & Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe, 2007. "Self-referential behaviour, overreaction and conventions in financial markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-24, May.
    4. Sandrine Jacob Leal, 2015. "Fundamentalists, chartists and asset pricing anomalies," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(11), pages 1837-1850, November.
    5. Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmidt, Ulrich & Brozynski, Torsten, 2006. "The impact of experience on risk taking, overconfidence, and herding of fund managers: Complementary survey evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(7), pages 1753-1766, October.
    6. Barber, Brad M. & Odean, Terrance & Zhu, Ning, 2009. "Systematic noise," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 547-569, November.
    7. Stéphane Goutte & David Guerreiro & Bilel Sanhaji & Sophie Saglio & Julien Chevallier, 2019. "International Financial Markets," Post-Print halshs-02183053, HAL.
    8. Sandrine Jacob Leal, 2015. "Fundamentalists, Chartists and Asset pricing anomalies," Post-Print hal-01508002, HAL.
    9. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, December.
    10. Cimadomo, Jacopo & Claeys, Peter & Poplawski-Ribeiro, Marcos, 2016. "How do experts forecast sovereign spreads?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 216-235.
    11. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    12. Cars Hommes & Florian Wagener, 2008. "Complex Evolutionary Systems in Behavioral Finance," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-054/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Kaizoji, Taisei & Leiss, Matthias & Saichev, Alexander & Sornette, Didier, 2015. "Super-exponential endogenous bubbles in an equilibrium model of fundamentalist and chartist traders," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 289-310.
    14. Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2008. "Thought and Behavior Contagion in Capital Markets," MPRA Paper 9164, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Diks, Cees & van der Weide, Roy, 2005. "Herding, a-synchronous updating and heterogeneity in memory in a CBS," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 741-763, April.
    16. Peng, Kang-Lin & Wu, Chih-Hung & Lin, Pearl M.C. & Kou, IokTeng Esther, 2023. "Investor sentiment in the tourism stock market," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    17. Burton G. Malkiel, 2003. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Its Critics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 59-82, Winter.
    18. Komáromi, György, 2002. "A hatékony piacok elméletének elméleti és gyakorlati relevanciája [The theoretical and practical relevance of the theory of efficient markets]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(5), pages 377-395.
    19. Arnswald, Torsten, 2001. "Investment Behaviour of German Equity Fund Managers - An Exploratory Analysis of Survey Data," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2001,08, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    20. Bence Toth & Imon Palit & Fabrizio Lillo & J. Doyne Farmer, 2011. "Why is order flow so persistent?," Papers 1108.1632, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2014.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:sfi:sfiwpa:500062. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/scfinfr.html .

    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.