A Face Can Launch a Thousand Shares (and a 0.80% abnormal return)
Published in Journal of Behavioral Finance, vol. 9 (2009), pp. 107-116. Link to Publisher's Abstract, Details and Paper
Abstract
In this paper we examine the market reaction—price and volume—to the appearance of a firm in the Who's News column of The Wall Street Journal. We differentiate between those firms whose articles are accompanied by a picture of an executive and a control set of firms whose articles on the same day are not accompanied by a picture. The results show a more pronounced market reaction to the “cum picture” articles, consistent with the incomplete information theory of Merton [1987] and the heuristic-based familiarity hypothesis. There is no evidence of significant long-run abnormal performance for the sample firms.
This paper has been withdrawn.