Analyst optimism and market sentiment: evidence from European corporate sustainability reporters

This study investigates the effect of investor sentiment on analysts’ optimism bias for a set of European companies with high-quality non-financial information reporting. The contents of the reports should make stock recommendations for such firms that are less prone to sentiment-driven optimism bia...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Río Solano, María Cristina del, Ferrer Zubiate, Elena, López Arceiz, Francisco José
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2024
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Pública de Navarra
Repository:Academica-e. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad Pública de Navarra
OAI Identifier:oai:academica-e.unavarra.es:2454/50333
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2454/50333
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Financial analysts
Optimism bias
Investor sentiment
Sustainability
Description
Summary:This study investigates the effect of investor sentiment on analysts’ optimism bias for a set of European companies with high-quality non-financial information reporting. The contents of the reports should make stock recommendations for such firms that are less prone to sentiment-driven optimism bias; our observations show this to be the case. For further insight, we analysed the informative value of stock recommendations in high- and low-sentiment periods, taking sustainability reporting quality into account. We find that buy recommendations for high-sustainability stocks have no informational value when sentiment is high, whereas informative recommendations in the form of sell recommendations for low-sustainability stocks appear when sentiment is high.