Mood and the market: can press reports of investors' mood predict stock prices?

PLoS One. 2013 Aug 28;8(8):e72031. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0072031. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

We examined whether press reports on the collective mood of investors can predict changes in stock prices. We collected data on the use of emotion words in newspaper reports on traders' affect, coded these emotion words according to their location on an affective circumplex in terms of pleasantness and activation level, and created indices of collective mood for each trading day. Then, by using time series analyses, we examined whether these mood indices, depicting investors' emotion on a given trading day, could predict the next day's opening price of the stock market. The strongest findings showed that activated pleasant mood predicted increases in NASDAQ prices, while activated unpleasant mood predicted decreases in NASDAQ prices. We conclude that both valence and activation levels of collective mood are important in predicting trend continuation in stock prices.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Affect*
  • Commerce
  • Humans
  • Investments*
  • Mass Behavior
  • Newspapers as Topic
  • Research Report

Grants and funding

Baruch College, Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, provided release time for research for the first author. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.