It stands to reason that news can influence events as much as it reports on them—but what about the way news is reported In an analysis of the Wall Street Journal s Abreast of the Market column Parsons found that even savvy investors are susceptible to influence in a way that can have real effects on the stock market. Even the most sophisticated players in the world are not completely immune from framing and interpretation Parsons says.
The column is like a weather report for financial news reporting on the events in the market on the previous day. It s not always the same weatherman doing the reporting however rather the paper employs a rotating Chinese Overseas America Number Data cast of columnists who break down the day s financial highlights. In Journalists and the Stock Market published in the the Review of Financial Studies Parsons analyzed the effects of these different perspectives along with colleagues Casey Dougal of Drexel University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Joseph Engelberg of the University of California San Diego. The researchers used computer software to analyze the tone of each columnist s writing determining whether they wrote with a generally bearish or generally bullish perspective. Some authors are always.
Debbie Downers and some authors always pump up the market says Parsons. Then they recorded how the stock market performed on the days following each article s appearance. As it turned out the market consistently dropped by several points after a bearish columnist wrote and consistently rose by several points following a bullish columnist. I describe the weather and you describe the weather and people dress differently for it says Parsons by way of analogy. What was most interesting was that the rise and fall seemed to have nothing to do with the content but everything to do with the tone with which it was presented.