The Impact of Sentiment on Price Discovery

We study how investor sentiment affects the speed with which prices reflect information. Price discovery is more timely for firms with greater sensitivity to sentiment, as measured by a sentiment beta. Our research improves our understanding of the price formation process when sentiment is not assumed to be constant. Our research design is novel as it considers a sentiment beta as well as economy-wide sentiment. This provides more comprehensive evidence on the impact of differing types of sentiment on the price formation process.