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Social media discussion of sell-side analyst research: evidence from Twitter

Andrew C. Call1; Mehmet C. Kara2; Matt Peterson3; Eric H. Weisbrod3

1 University of Southern California · 2 University of Georgia · 3 University of Kansas

Review of Accounting Studies 2026 open access

Abstract We examine Twitter discussion of sell-side analysts’ stock recommendation revisions. While many investors lack direct access to analyst research, we observe revision-related Twitter discussion associated with approximately 90 percent of the revisions in our sample, usually within three hours of their announcement. Revision-related Twitter discussion is greater for upgrades and for analysts from larger brokerages. Examining within-revision intraday price discovery, we observe increased price discovery during intraday windows with more revision-related tweets, especially for tweets that have more user engagement, are posted by more influential authors, or involve stocks with more intense retail trading volume. We find that revision-related retail trading is more intense and better predicts future returns for revisions with more revision-related Twitter discussion. We observe no such evidence for institutional investors who have direct access to sell-side research. Our results suggest that Twitter is an important channel in facilitating price discovery following analyst revisions, particularly among retail investors.

DOI
10.1007/s11142-025-09929-w
Volume
31 (2)
Pages
1088-1130
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
openalex crossref