Stock reaction to market-wide information: Working paper series--08-14

An anomaly within the behavioral literature is that as yet there is no evidence suggesting that stocks mis-react to common information as they do to firm-specific information. We demonstrate the limitations of the previous research and revisit the issue of stock reaction to common information in this manuscript. We find a statistically and economically significant reaction pattern to common information as the behavioral models suggest we should. This finding thus complements the findings of stock mis-reaction to firm-specific information, and should benefit researchers attempting to understand investor behavior. Furthermore, we find that the size factor may not only proxy future economic growth as suggested by Vassalou (2003), but also the delayed reaction to the news related to future economic growth