Mediabevakning och aktiemarknadens reaktion på ny information

Abstract

The relationship between public media and capital markets is a subject that has been studied for a long time. Some argue that mass media is an important factor in understanding the financial markets because the media has the ability to generate irrational reactions. On this basis a critique against the media has emerged which believe that the mass media does not publish valuable information. Some studies, however, have concluded that an easier access to new information leads to more efficient price adjustments within the financial markets.The purpose of this study is to explain how the historical media coverage preceding stock recommendations affects the entire stock market by studying the abnormal return that precede and follow the studied recommendations. The study is based on recommendations on Swedish shares listed on the Large-, Mid- and Small-Cap lists on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm during a period of two years. Media coverage is based on articles from major Swedish magazines while stock recommendations are obtained from major analysts.Previous research has been done on the stock market's reaction to the publication of new recommendations, but this study takes an additional variable into account, the number of historical publications in the media, in an attempt to create further understanding in the field of subject.The results suggest that the degree of media coverage preceding the publication of a stock recommendation do not have an impact on the market's reception of the new information. The most noticeable difference between the recommendations that were preceded by high and low media coverage respectively was that the recommendation which was preceded by low media coverage showed a marginally larger abnormal return at the publication date. Since this observation, however, could not be confirmed statistically the study cannot draw any conclusions from this result and thus the study cannot prove that a larger amount of easily accessible information leads to a more informed market.