Journal of Finance Vol. 64 No. 5 2009

Media Coverage and the Cross‐section of Stock Returns

Lily H. Fang; Joël Peress¹

¹ Lily Fang and Joel Peress are both at INSEAD. We would like to thank Bernard Dumas, Edward Fang, Harald Hau, Pierre Hillion, Harrison Hong, Soeren Hvidkjaer, Charles Jones, Massimo Massa, Steve Monahan, Paul Tetlock, Clara Vega, Kent Womack, Lu Zheng, and seminar participants at Imperial College Lon

Abstract

By reaching a broad population of investors, mass media can alleviate informational frictions and affect security pricing even if it does not supply genuine news. We investigate this hypothesis by studying the cross‐sectional relation between media coverage and expected stock returns. We find that stocks with no media coverage earn higher returns than stocks with high media coverage even after controlling for well‐known risk factors. These results are more pronounced among small stocks and stocks with high individual ownership, low analyst following, and high idiosyncratic volatility. Our findings suggest that the breadth of information dissemination affects stock returns.

DOI

10.1111/j.1540-6261.2009.01493.x

Volume

64

Issue

5

Pages

2023-2052

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓