Social Media Sentiment in International Stock Returns and Trading Activity

Selin Duz Tan*, Oktay Tas

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

64 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The authors investigate the impact of social media on S&P index constituents for U.S., European, and emerging markets with the international investor perspective using firm-specific Twitter sentiment and activity. The findings indicate that Twitter activity and sentiment are associated with trading volume and returns, and predicts subsequent-day trading volume. The authors find that firm-specific Twitter sentiment contains information for predicting stock returns and this predictive power remains significant after controlling news sentiment. The positive tone of Twitter sentiment is more pronounced in small and emerging market firms, which is consistent with the literature stating that small firms are hard to value and emerging market firms contain high information asymmetry. From a practical perspective, investors could potentially use social media sentiment in trading strategies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)221-234
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Behavioral Finance
Volume22
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Institute of Behavioral Finance.

Keywords

  • Social media sentiment
  • Stock returns
  • Trading activity
  • Twitter activity
  • Twitter sentiment

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