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The primary objective of this research is to provide evidence that there are two distinct layers of investor sentiments that can affect asset valuation models. The first is general market-wide sentiments, while the second is biased approaches toward specific assets.

To achieve the goal, the authors conducted a multi-step analysis of stock returns and constructed complex sentiment indices that reflect the optimism or pessimism of stock market participants. The authors used panel regression with fixed effects and a sample of the US stock market to improve the explanatory power of the three-factor models.

The analysis showed that both market-level and stock-level sentiments have significant contributions, although they are not equal. The impact of stock-level sentiments is more profound than market-level sentiments, suggesting that neglecting the stock-level sentiment proxies in asset valuation models may lead to severe deficiencies.

In contrast to previous studies, the authors propose that investor sentiments should be measured using a multi-level factor approach rather than a single-factor approach. The authors identified two distinct levels of investor sentiment: general market-wide sentiments and individual stock-specific sentiments.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of Indian investor sentiments on contemporaneous stock returns of Bombay Stock Exchange, National Stock Exchange and various sectoral indices in India by developing a sentiment index.

The study uses principal component analysis to develop a sentiment index as a proxy for Indian stock market sentiments over a time frame from April 1996 to January 2017. It uses an exploratory approach to identify relevant proxies in building a sentiment index using indirect market measures and macro variables of Indian and US markets.

The study finds that there is a significant positive correlation between the sentiment index and stock index returns. Sectors which are more dependent on institutional fund flows show a significant impact of the change in sentiments on their respective sectoral indices.

The study has used data at a monthly frequency. Analysing higher frequency data can explain short-term temporal dynamics between sentiments and returns better. Further studies can be done to explore whether sentiments can be used to predict stock returns.

The results imply that one can develop profitable trading strategies by investing in sectors like metals and capital goods, which are more susceptible to generate positive returns when the sentiment index is high.

The study supplements the existing literature on the impact of investor sentiments on contemporaneous stock returns in the context of a developing market. It identifies relevant proxies of investor sentiments for the Indian stock market.

A composite sentiment index (CSI) from quantitative proxy sentiment indicators is likely to be a lag sentiment measure as it reflects only the information absorbed in the market. Information theories and behavioral finance research suggest that market prices may not adjust to all the available information at a point in time. This study hypothesizes that the sentiment from the unincorporated information may provide possible market leads. Thus, this paper aims to discuss a method to identify the un-incorporated qualitative Sentiment from information unadjusted in the market price to test whether sentiment polarity from the information can impact stock returns. Factoring market sentiment extracted from unincorporated information (residual sentiment or sentiment backlog) in CSI is an essential step for developing an integrated sentiment index to explain deviation in asset prices from their intrinsic value. Identifying the unincorporated Sentiment also helps in text analytics to distinguish between current and future market sentiment.

Initially, this study collects the news from various textual sources and runs the NVivo tool to compute the corpus data’s sentiment polarity. Subsequently, using the predictability horizon technique, this paper mines the unincorporated component of the news’s sentiment polarity. This study regresses three months’ sentiment polarity (the current period and its lags for two months) on the NIFTY50 index of the National Stock Exchange of India. If the three-month lags are significant, it indicates that news sentiment from the three months is unabsorbed and is likely to impact the future NIFTY50 index. The sentiment is also conditionally tested for firm size, volatility and specific industry sector-dependence. This paper discusses the implications of the results.

Based on information theories and empirical findings, the paper demonstrates that it is possible to identify unincorporated information and extract the sentiment polarity to predict future market direction. The sentiment polarity variables are significant for the current period and two-month lags. The magnitude of the sentiment polarity coefficient has decreased from the current period to lag one and lag two. This study finds that the unabsorbed component or backlog of news consisted of mainly negative market news or unconfirmed news of the previous period, as illustrated in Tables 1 and 2 and Figure 2. The findings on unadjusted news effects vary with firm size, volatility and sectoral indices as depicted in Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6.

The related literature on sentiment index describes top-down/ bottom-up models using quantitative proxy sentiment indicators and natural language processing (NLP)/machine learning approaches to compute the sentiment from qualitative information to explain variance in market returns. NLP approaches use current period sentiment to understand market trends ignoring the unadjusted sentiment carried from the previous period. The underlying assumption here is that the market adjusts to all available information instantly, which is proved false in various empirical studies backed by information theories. The paper discusses a novel approach to identify and extract sentiment from unincorporated information, which is a critical sentiment measure for developing a holistic sentiment index, both in text analytics and in top-down quantitative models. Practitioners may use the methodology in the algorithmic trading models and conduct stock market research.

The primary objective of this research is to provide a precise interpretation of the constructed machine learning model and produce definitive summaries that can evaluate the influence of investor sentiment on the overall sales of non-fungible token (NFT) assets. To achieve this objective, the NFT hype index was constructed as well as several approaches of XAI were employed to interpret Black Box models and assess the magnitude and direction of the impact of the features used.

The research paper involved the construction of a sentiment index termed the NFT hype index, which aims to measure the influence of market actors within the NFT industry. This index was created by analyzing written content posted by 62 high-profile individuals and opinion leaders on the social media platform Twitter. The authors collected posts from the Twitter accounts that were afterward classified by tonality with a help of natural language processing model VADER. Then the machine learning methods and XAI approaches (feature importance, permutation importance and SHAP) were applied to explain the obtained results.

The built index was subjected to rigorous analysis using the gradient boosting regressor model and explainable AI techniques, which confirmed its significant explanatory power. Remarkably, the NFT hype index exhibited a higher degree of predictive accuracy compared to the well-known sentiment indices.

The NFT hype index, constructed from Twitter textual data, functions as an innovative, sentiment-based indicator for investment decision-making in the NFT market. It offers investors unique insights into the market sentiment that can be used alongside conventional financial analysis techniques to enhance risk management, portfolio optimization and overall investment outcomes within the rapidly evolving NFT ecosystem. Thus, the index plays a crucial role in facilitating well-informed, data-driven investment decisions and ensuring a competitive edge in the digital assets market.

The authors developed a novel index of investor interest for NFT assets (NFT hype index) based on text messages posted by market influencers and compared it to conventional sentiment indices in terms of their explanatory power. With the application of explainable AI, it was shown that sentiment indices may perform as significant predictors for NFT sales and that the NFT hype index works best among all sentiment indices considered.

While the classic futures pricing tool works well for capital markets that are less affected by sentiment, it needs further modification in China's case as retail investors constitute a large portion of the Chinese stock market participants. Their expectations of the rate of return are prone to emotional swings. This paper, therefore, explores the role of investor sentiment in explaining futures basis changes via the channel of implied discount rates.

Using Chinese equity market data from 2010 to 2019, the authors augment the cost-of-carry model for pricing stock index futures by incorporating the investor sentiment factor. This design allows us to estimate the basis in a better way that reflects the relationship between the underlying index price and its futures price.

The authors find strong evidence that the measure of Chinese investor sentiment drives the abnormal fluctuations in the basis of China's stock index futures. Moreover, this driving force turns out to be much less prominent for large-cap stocks, liquid contracting frequencies, regulatory loosening periods and mature markets, further verifying the sentiment argument for basis mispricing.

This study contributes to the literature by relying on investor sentiment measures to explain the persistent discount anomaly of index futures basis in China. This finding is of great importance for Chinese investors with the intention to implement arbitrage, hedging and speculation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine investor sentiment by measuring the impact of market sentiment shocks on the volatility of the Islamic stock index of five ASEAN countries, with noise traders as a proxy for market sentiment.

The GJR-GARCH model is used to capture the empirically observed fact that negative shocks in the past period have a stronger impact on variance than positive shocks in the present.

All five ASEAN Islamic stock indices show clustering volatility. However, only three countries, namely, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, demonstrate leverage effects. In addition, the effect of market sentiment on Islamic stock index returns is observed in the Indonesian and Malaysian markets, which are the two largest Islamic markets with a dominant Muslim population in the ASEAN. This finding implies that the trading behaviours of Muslim investors in the Shariah market are the same as their behaviours in the conventional market, that is, nonadherence to the Sunnah.

Whilst establishing investment strategies, creating portfolios and providing client-advisory services, investors and fund managers should factor in the presence of market sentiment and its impact on stock performance and volatility. In addition, a capital market system preventing rumour-based transactions is compelling.

In some markets, the Islamic financial products awareness should be increased through education to attract increased domestic investors with the potential to boost growth in the Islamic stock market.

Investigation market sentiment impacts on the Islamic stock index using noise traders as a proxy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the direct and indirect sentiment measures are similar in explaining mutual fund performance.

The authors examine the role of direct and indirect sentiment measures on fund performance in two scenarios. One is when a sentiment measure is added to market models, and the other is when it used independently. Also, the authors propose a system science theory to explain the findings.

The authors find that both direct and indirect sentiment measures are integral to the benchmark models to explain fund performance. However, while the explanatory power of the direct sentiment index is robust when used independently or collectively, the indirect sentiment measures can explain fund performance only when used along with other market factors.

Given the number of sentiment measures, it is critical to determine whether these measures contain the same information of sentiment. This paper represents the first study on this topic.

The purpose of this paper is to create an endurance index of housing investor sentiment and use it to forecast housing stock returns. This study performs not only in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting, like many previous studies did, but also a true forecasting by using all lag terms of independent variables. In addition, an evaluation procedure is applied to quantify the quality of forecasts.

Using a binomial probability distribution model, this paper creates an endurance index of housing investor sentiment. The index reflects the probability of the high or low stock price being the close price for the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Housing Sector Index. This housing investor sentiment endurance index directly uses housing stock price differentials to measure housing investor reactions to all relevant news. Empirical results in this study suggest that the index can not only play a significant role in explaining variations in housing stock returns but also have decent forecasting ability.

Results of this study reveal the considerable forecasting ability of the index. Monthly forecasts of housing stock returns have an overall accuracy of 51 per cent, while the overall accuracy of 8-quarter rolling forecasts even reaches 84 per cent. In addition, the index has decent forecasting ability on changes in housing prices as suggested by the strong evidence of one-direction causal relations running from the endurance index to housing prices. However, extreme volatility of housing stock returns may impair the forecasting quality.

The endurance index of housing investor sentiment is easy to construct and use for forecasting housing stock returns. The demonstrated predictability of the index on housing stock returns in this study can have broad implications on housing-related business practices through providing an effective forecasting tool to investors and analysts of housing stocks, as well as housing policy-makers.

Despite different investor sentiment proxies suggested in the previous studies, few of them can effectively predict stock returns, due to some embedded limitations. Many increases and decreases inn prices cancel out each other during the trading day, as many unreliable sentiments cancel out each other. This dynamic process reveals not only investor sentiment but also resilience or endurance of sentiment. It is only long-lasting resilient sentiment that can be built in the closing price. It means that the only feasible way to use investor sentiment contained in stock prices to forecast future stock prices is to detach resilient investor sentiment from stock prices and construct an index of endurance of investor sentiment.

The purpose of this paper is to study a novel and direct measurement of investor sentiment index in the Tunisian stock market that overcomes the weaknesses of a well-known investor sentiment index by Baker and Wurgler (2006, 2007).

Based on the data of 43 firms of the Tunisian stock market index (Tunindex) over the period 2004–2016, the author constructs a monthly investor sentiment that reflects both the economic fundamentals and the investor sentiment components. Seven indirect indicators collected from investor sentiment literature and Tunisian stock exchange were analyzed. Specifically, after accounting to remove the sentiment component for macroeconomic factors, the author estimates each sentiment proxy with a number of controlling variables. The residual from the estimation is used to define the author’s measure of excessive investor sentiment. To determine the best timing of sentiment indicators, the author employs a factor sentiment series as the first principal component of these total seven sentiment proxies and their lags of a month. Furthermore, by capturing the highest saturations with the first factor analysis, the author regressed each selected indicator’s lead or one-month lag in a second linear principal component analysis to reach the author’s Tunisian market’s total sentiment index.

The results show that all employed indicators may reflect the investor sentiment on the Tunisian stock market. The findings also indicate significant evidence that the author’s sentiment index takes into consideration the political and economic events such as the Jasmine Revolution experienced by Tunisia during the period from January 2, 2004 to December 30, 2016. Moreover, investor sentiment index flow appears to be one leading mechanism for the performance of Tunindex.

Results found have clearly shown that the author’s seven indirect indicators can reflect investor sentiment in the Tunisian context. The various sentiment proxies are bullish indicators of investor sentiment. Brown and Cliff (2004) argue that the higher bull/bear ratio, the more investor sentiment is bullish. An important value of price–earnings ratio implies that the level of investor confidence as for change in market is also important. Liquidity measured by trading volume, market turnover ratio and liquidity ratio reflects individual investor sentiment. Otherwise, it seems that investors only invest when they are optimistic and reduce market liquidity once they became pessimistic. The monthly response rate to initial public offerings (IPOs) represents a bullish sentiment indicator. Indeed, the more optimistic investors are, the higher the response rate to IPOs. Investor satisfaction also reflects investor sentiment. In other words, a high level of satisfaction translates an important level of optimism. In addition, the author also recognizes that the authors’ Tunisian sentiment index follow general trend of stock market prices and appears to be an important determinant of Tunindex returns during the period of study, from January, 2004 to December, 2016. The author suggests investor sentiment can help predict Tunindex returns, distinguishing between turbulent and tranquil periods in the financial market. The graphical illustration of monthly investor sentiment index shows that it captures extreme events such as the Tunisian revolution of January, 2011, also known as the Jasmine revolution which marked the start of the Arab Spring and the consequences of economic and political turmoil in Tunisia that have disrupted economic activity in the next few years. Like all research work, the current research paper has certain limitations. The choice of control variables allowing the author to separate sentiment component of that fundamental might be criticized. Moreover, there is no unanimous number of control variables but they are chosen according to data availability. The author also believes that one of the study’s weaknesses is that the author has not examined the impact of investor sentiment on the Tunisian stock market. For future interesting avenues of research, the author proposes, first, to study the effect of investor sentiment on financial asset returns and check, second, if sentiment factor constitutes an additional source of business risk valued by the marketplace.

This study aims to develop two sentiment indices sourced from news stories and corporate disclosures of the firms in the National Stock Exchange NIFTY 50 Index by extracting sentiment polarity. Subsequently, the two indices would be compared for the predictive accuracy of the stock market and stock returns during the post-digitization period 2011–2018. Based on the findings this paper suggests various options for financial strategy.

The news- and disclosure-based sentiment indices are developed using sentiment polarity extracted from qualitative content from news and corporate disclosures, respectively, using qualitative analysis tool “N-Vivo.” The indices developed are compared for stock market predictability using quantitative regression techniques. Thus, the study is conducted using both qualitative data and tools and quantitative techniques.

This study shows that the investor is more magnetized to news than towards corporate disclosures though disclosures contain both qualitative as well as quantitative information on the fundamentals of a firm. This study is extended to sectoral indices, and the results show that specific sectoral news impacts sectoral indices intensely over market news. It is found that the market discounts information in disclosures prior to its release. As disclosures in quarterly statements are delayed information input, firms can use voluntary disclosures to reduce the communication gap with investors by using the internet. Managers would do so only when the stock price is undervalued and tend to ignore the market and the shareholder in other cases. Otherwise, disclosure sentiment attracts only long horizon traders.

Finance managers need to improve disclosure dependence on investors by innovative disclosure methodologies irrespective of the ruling market price. In this context, future studies on investor sentiment would be interesting as they need to capture man–machine interactions reflected in market sentiment showing the interplay of human biases with machine-driven decisions. The findings would be useful in developing the financial strategy for protecting firm value.

This study is unique in providing a comparative analysis of sentiment extracted from news and corporate disclosures for explaining the stock market direction and stock returns and contributes to the behavioral finance literature.