Abstract
As the internet has become widespread and easy to access everywhere, it is common for people to search information via online search engines such as Google and Naver in everyday life. Recent studies have used online search volume of specific keyword as a measure of the internet users' attention in order to predict disease outbreaks such as flu and cancer, an unemployment rate, and an index of a nation's economic condition, and etc. For stock traders, web search is also one of major information resources to obtain data about individual stock items. Therefore, search volume of a stock item can reflect the amount of investors' attention on it. The investor attention has been regarded as a crucial factor influencing on stock price but it has been measured by indirect proxies such as market capitalization, trading volume, advertising expense, and etc. It has been theoretically and empirically proved that an increase of investors' attention on a stock item brings temporary increase of the stock price and the price recovers in the long run. Recent development of internet environment enables to measure the investor attention directly by the internet search volume of individual stock item, which has been used to show the attention-induced price pressure. Previous studies focus mainly on Dow Jones and NASDAQ market in the United States. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the individual investors' attention measured by the internet search volumes and stock price changes of individual stock items in the KOSDAQ market in Korea, where the proportion of the trades by individual investors are about 90% of the total. In addition, we examine the difference between industries in the influence of investors' attention on stock return. The internet search volume of stocks were gathered from "Naver Trend" service weekly between January 2007 and June 2015. The regression model with the error term with AR(1) covariance structure is used to analyze the data since the weekly prices in a stock item are systematically correlated. The market capitalization, trading volume, the increment of trading volume, and the month in which each trade occurs are included in the model as control variables. The fitted model shows that an abnormal increase of search volume of a stock item has a positive influence on the stock return and the amount of the influence varies among the industry. The stock items in IT software, construction, and distribution industries have shown to be more influenced by the abnormally large internet search volume than the average across the industries. On the other hand, the stock items in IT hardware, manufacturing, entertainment, finance, and communication industries are less influenced by the abnormal search volume than the average. In order to verify price pressure caused by investors' attention in KOSDAQ, the stock return of the current week is modelled using the abnormal search volume observed one to four weeks ahead. On average, the abnormally large increment of the search volume increased the stock return of the current week and one week later, and it decreased the stock return in two and three weeks later. There is no significant relationship with the stock return after 4 weeks. This relationship differs among the industries. An abnormal search volume brings particularly severe price reversal on the stocks in the IT software industry, which are often to be targets of irrational investments by individual investors. An abnormal search volume caused less severe price reversal on the stocks in the manufacturing and IT hardware industries than on average across the industries. The price reversal was not observed in the communication, finance, entertainment, and transportation industries, which are known to be influenced largely by macro-economic factors such as oil price and currency exchange rate. The result of this study can be utilized to construct an intelligent trading system based on the big data gathered from web search engines, social network services, and internet communities. Particularly, the difference of price reversal effect between industries may provide useful information to make a portfolio and build an investment strategy.
최근 인터넷의 보편화와 정보통신 기술의 발달로 인해 인터넷을 통한 정보검색이 일상화 됨에 따라 주식에 관한 정보 역시 검색엔진, 소셜네트워크서비스, 인터넷 커뮤니티 등을 통해 획득하는 경우가 잦아졌다. 특정 단어에 대한 키워드 검색량은 사용자의 관심도를 반영하기 때문에 다양한 연구에서 개별 기업에 대한 인터넷 검색량은 투자자의 관심도에 대한 척도로서의 사용가능성을 각광받았다. 특정 주식에 대한 투자자의 관심이 증가할 때 일시적으로 주가가 상승하였다가 회복하는 반전현상은 여러 연구를 통해 검증되어 왔지만 그 동안 투자자의 관심도는 주로 주식거래량, 광고 비용 등을 사용해 간접적으로 측정되었다. 본 연구에서는 국내 코스닥 시장에 상장된 기업에 대한 인터넷 검색량을 투자자의 관심의 척도로 사용하여 투자자의 관심에 근거한 주가변동성의 변화를 전체 시장 측면과 산업별 측면에서 관찰한다. 또한 투자자 관심이 야기한 가격압박에 의한 주가 반전현상의 존재를 코스닥 시장에서 검증하고 산업 간의 반전정도의 차이를 비교한다. 실증분석 결과 비정상적인 인터넷 검색량 증가는 주가변동성의 유의적인 증가를 가져왔고 이러한 현상은 IT S/W, 건설, 유통 산업군에서 특히 강하게 나타났다. 비정상적인 인터넷 검색량의 증가 이후 2주 간 주가변동성이 증가하였고 3~4주 후에는 오히려 변동성이 감소하는 것을 확인하였다. 이러한 주가 반전현상 역시 IT S/W, 건설, 유통 산업군에서 보다 극단적으로 발생하는 것으로 나타난다.