Examining Feedback, Momentum and Overreaction in National Equity Markets
Melbourne Institute Working Paper No. 18/09
Date: July 2009
Author(s):
Abstract
The matters of asset price feedback, momentum and overreaction are theoretically motivated by a series of papers in the behavioural finance field. These papers propose theoretical conditions and examples pursuant to which traditional pricing rationales are inapplicable and asset prices are influenced by characteristics such as feedback and momentum (Barberis, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1988; De Long et al., 1990a,b; Hong and Stein, 1999). There are few empirical models and results, however, regarding the existence of feedback and reactionary effects, and the manner in which feedback effects are distributed across pricing factors. This paper derives a model entailing both factorspecific feedback and momentum effects, and overreaction. The model is applied to a set of developed equity markets, with results indicating that the majority of the markets exhibit some form of corrective feedback.