Author: Major Coleman

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 9781267971432

Chapter 1. If investors choose consumption and investment levels jointly to maximize expected utility or value, then investor sentiment about stock returns should be reflected in consumption choices. I find a positive contemporaneous relationship between aggregate consumption of nondurables and investor stock sentiment. Investors' false perceptions of changes in stock market wealth appear to move consumption in the same direction initially. But as expected stock returns do not materialize, sentiment-based consumption is reversed. On average, this reversal occurs two to four years later, which coincides with the time it takes for sentiment to correct from prior levels. Sentiment does not positively predict returns as a positive proxy of rational expectations of risk would. Nor does sentiment negatively predict the covariance between consumption growth and returns as an inverse proxy for rational expectations of risk would. The results suggest that bias in investor expectations is an important factor in consumption-based asset pricing models. Chapter 2. I hypothesize that directly observable past returns drive housing investment more so than fundamentals because the difference between price and fundamental value---sentiment---is not directly observable. Housing sentiment only becomes recognizable when it is extreme, so the magnitude of sentiment must be large enough relative to recent returns in order for prices to correct. I construct indices of housing sentiment and use the measures to calibrate a specification of home price growth driven by momentum investing. I find that home price growth is persistent even when prices are moving away from fundamental value, and reversals in home price growth are only likely when the housing sentiment measures are extreme.