Investor Inattention and the Underreaction to Stock Recommendations

Investors’ reaction to stock recommendations is often incomplete so that there is a predictable post-recommendation drift. I investigate whether investor inattention contributes to this drift by using turnover as a proxy for investor attention. I find that the recommendation drift of firms with low prior turnover is more than double in magnitude compared to that of firms with high prior turnover. Additional proxies for attention, such as analyst coverage, institutional ownership, days with few distracting news events, or a measure of residual turnover that controls for liquidity and uncertainty, produce similar results. Volume reactions around the recommendation event show that investors fail to react promptly to recommendations on low attention stocks. Together, the evidence suggests that investor inattention is a plausible explanation for investors’ underreaction to stock recommendations.