Investor Sentiment and Assets Valuation

Using the Chinese stock market data as sample, this paper investigates the impact of investor sentiment on the assets valuation. In order to classify stocks objectively, our sample stocks are sorted by double indicators (B/M and PE). In the portfolio, we find stocks with low B/M and high PE are sensitive to investor sentiment, which are considered to be costly to arbitrage. Investor sentiment has incremental power to explain stock return co-movements, which indicates that these stocks would perform higher (lower) excess returns when investors are bullish (bearish).Our findings support a role for investor sentiment in the formation of return and the change of investor sentiment should be taken as an important systemic risk in asset pricing and portfolio management. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.