We examine time-invariant and time-varying market integration across European stock markets. Financial integration increases during the sovereign debt crisis and is mainly driven by macroeconomic variables, market capitalization, political uncertainty, and technological developments. Higher market integration is associated with decreasing diversification benefits. During crises, investors select portfolios that are not only explained by firm characteristics.

Short-term traders could affect the informativeness of stock prices about long-run fundamentals. Less (more) short-termism may thus induce managers to rely more (less) on stock prices in real investment decisions. Supporting this notion, we show that the investment-to-price sensitivity is inversely related to two short-termism proxies (controlling for firm size): institutional churn and liquidity. We confirm this finding using decimalization and an increase in mutual fund disclosure frequency as exogenous shocks to short-termism. Furthermore, short-termism is associated with an increased likelihood of voluntary capital expenditure forecasts by managers, suggesting a greater tendency to solicit market feedback when short-termism is high.