I'm looking for you: Investor attention and the return on shares of Brazilian listed companies.
Investor Attention, Investment Return, Google Trends.
This project aims to investigate the impact of investor attention on the investment returns of companies listed on the Brazilian stock exchange (B3) from 2018 to 2023. Using an empirical approach grounded in previous studies that correlate investor attention with Google Trends data, the research covers a diverse sample of companies from different sectors. Financial data were obtained from the Refinitiv database, while investor attention was measured using Google Trends, considering both the ticker and the name of the companies. Panel regression models were applied to analyze these relationships. The investigation revealed that the popularity of the company, measured by Google Trends, had a significant relationship with the accumulated returns over the analyzed period, except for the weekly period, which was not significant. Among the two measures of popularity, the company's name showed a more consistent relationship with investment returns than the ticker. The proposed hypotheses were tested, with Hypothesis 1 suggesting a significant relationship between popularity measured by the company's name on Google Trends and investment returns over different time horizons, and Hypothesis 2 suggesting a significant relationship between popularity measured by the company's ticker on Google Trends and investment returns over the same horizons. The results indicated that Hypothesis 1 was partially accepted, with the relationship being significant over longer periods but not on a weekly basis. Hypothesis 2 was rejected, as the popularity measured by the ticker did not show a significant relationship with returns in any time horizon. These findings reveal that investor attention significantly influences stock returns, with variations depending on the time horizon of the analysis and the method of measuring investor attention. This contributes to the understanding of the role of investor attention in determining investment returns, helping to guide more informed and effective investment strategies.