Investor Attention And Market Reaction Based On Stock Code

In the numerous and complex information flow,it is difficult for investors to obtain information in a timely and cost-free manner due to their limited cognition and processing capabilities.In the investment process,investors not only pay attention to the fundamental information related to the stock,but also pay attention to the information that attracts their attention but has nothing to do with the fundamental information.Many studies have shown that investors "take shortcuts" to speed up their decision-making process.Investors are unlikely to evenly distribute their attention among thousands of stocks but tend to focus on the stocks that attract their attention,and then Speed up the investment decision-making process.So,can the digital code of a stock be used as a factor to attract investors’ attention,and then influence investors’ investment decisions?The preference for numbers exists widely in daily life.People prefer auspicious numbers such as "6","8",and "9",and avoid the unlucky number "4".So do these digital preferences and avoidances that are common in life also exist in the stock market? In what way is this phenomenon achieved? Considering the availability of data,this paper takes 2,510 stocks listed in the stock market from 2010 to 2020 as the entry point and uses Baidu index search volume as a proxy variable of investor attention to examine the investment in each stock after listing.This paper explores whether investors’ numerical preference for ticker symbols can influence investors’ decisions and the market performance of stocks.The results show that: the stocks with the last digit code 8 get more attention,while the stocks with the last digit code 4 get less attention;the stocks with the last digit code 6 and 8 have more shareholders,and the last digit There are fewer stockholders with the code 4,and this phenomenon of number preference also appears in the number of individual investors.In addition,although institutional investors show a preference for numbers 6 and 8,they do not show a preference for number 4.The stocks with the last digit of 8 have higher price-earnings ratios,and the stocks with the last digit of 4 have lower liquidity;the above-mentioned numerical preference phenomenon is slightly different in different stock sectors,that is,different sectors stocks are affected differently by numerical preferences.