Sentiment during Recessions

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of sentiment on asset prices during the 20th century (1905 to 2005). As a proxy for sentiment, we use the fraction of positive and negative words in two columns of financial news from theNew York Times. The main contribution of the paper is to show that, controlling for other well-known time-series patterns, the predictability of stock returns using news' content is concentrated in recessions. A one standard deviation shock to our news measure during recessions predicts a change in the conditional average return on the DJIA of 12 basis points over one day.