This paper reveals that in addition to fundamental factors, the 52‐week high price and recent investor sentiment play an important role in analysts’ target price formation. Analysts’ forecasts of short‐term earnings and long‐term earnings growth are shown to be important explanatory variables for target prices; equally, the 52‐week high price and recent investor sentiment are also shown to explain target price levels and especially target price biases. Our analysis additionally reveals that analysts place greater weight on these two non‐fundamental factors in settings with greater task complexity and to some extent in those with greater resource constraints. Conversely, on balance, the results suggest that this increased reliance does not translate into an increased impact per unit of each non‐fundamental factor on forecast bias. Finally, our results show that target prices are useful in predicting future stock returns beyond earnings forecasts and commonly used risk proxies. However, in an internally consistent fashion, the informativeness of target prices for future returns is significantly reduced when greater weight is placed on either the 52‐week high or recent investor sentiment in the target price formation process.

中文翻译：

---

目标价预测：52 周高价和近期投资者情绪的作用

本文揭示，除了基本面因素外，52 周高位和近期投资者情绪对分析师目标价的形成也起着重要作用。分析师对短期盈利和长期盈利增长的预测被证明是目标价格的重要解释变量；同样，52 周的高价和近期的投资者情绪也被证明可以解释目标价格水平，尤其是目标价格偏差。我们的分析还表明，在任务复杂性更高的环境中以及在某种程度上在资源约束更大的环境中，分析师更重视这两个非基本因素。相反，总的来说，结果表明，这种增加的依赖并不会转化为每个非基本因素对预测偏差的每单位影响的增加。最后，我们的结果表明，目标价格有助于预测超出盈利预测和常用风险代理的未来股票回报。然而，以内部一致的方式，当在目标价格形成过程中更加重视 52 周高点或近期投资者情绪时，未来回报的目标价格的信息量会显着降低。