"More Than Words: Quantifying Language to Measure Firms' Fundamentals"
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Journal of Finance,
June
2008
Volume: 63
|
Pages: 1437-1467
Publication type: Journal article
Research Archive Topic: Capital Markets and Investments
Abstract
We examine whether a simple quantitative measure of language can be used to predict individual firms' accounting earnings and stock returns. Our three main findings are: (1) the fraction of negative words in firm-specific news stories forecasts low firm earnings; (2) firms' stock prices briefly underreact to the information embedded in negative words; and (3) the earnings and return predictability from negative words is largest for the stories that focus on fundamentals. Together these findings suggest that linguistic media content captures otherwise hard-to-quantify aspects of firms' fundamentals, which investors quickly incorporate into stock prices.
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