Speaker: YAN Shuo（South University of Science and Technology of China, Assistant Professor）

Date & Time:12:00-13:00, Tue. 27th, April 2021

Venue:Room 306, Tongji Building A

Abstract:

In this study, we examine the effects of opinion leaders’ posts on investor disagreement using data from two stock forums. By matching the same stock announcement post on the two forums at the same time and exploiting a difference-in-difference setting, we find that the post trends with emergence of opinion leaders have lower disagreement level than their peers, and this effect is more pronounced when the opinion leaders demonstrate stronger opinion polarity. Also, the opinion polarity level of opinion leaders for the announcement negatively correlates with the duration of persistency increase in abnormal trading volume after the stock announcements published. These findings suggest that investors condition their beliefs on what opinion leaders are saying and the emergence of opinion leaders contribute to faster belief convergence and more efficient prices or information cascades.