Purpose

COVID-19 has had an immense impact on global stock markets, with no sector escaping its effects. Investor attention towards COVID-19 surged as the virus spread, the number of cases grew and its consequences imposed on everyday life. We assess whether this increase in investor attention may explain stock returns across different sectors during this unusual period.

Design/methodology/approach

We adopt the methodology of Da et al. (2015), using Google search volume (GSV) as a proxy for investor attention to examine the relationship between investor attention and stock returns across 11 sectors.

Findings

Our results demonstrate that heightened attention towards COVID-19 negatively influences US stock returns. However, relatively speaking, some sectors appear to have gained from the increased attention. This outperformance is centred in the sectors most likely to benefit (or likely to lose least) from the crisis and associated spending by households and government (i.e. consumer staples, healthcare and IT). Such results may be explained by an information discovery hypothesis in the sense that investors are searching online for information to enable a greater understanding of COVID-19's impact on relative stock sector performance.

Originality/value

While we do not claim that investor attention is the only driver of stock returns during this unique period, we do provide evidence that it contributes to the market impact and to the heterogeneity of returns across stock market sectors.

中文翻译：

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投资者的关注以及美国股市对COVID-19危机的反应

目的

COVID-19对全球股票市场产生了巨大影响，没有任何部门可以逃脱其影响。随着病毒的传播，案件数量的增加以及其对日常生活的影响，投资者对COVID-19的关注激增。我们评估了投资者关注度的增加是否可以解释在这个不寻常时期内不同行业的股票收益。

设计/方法/方法

我们采用Da等人的方法。（2015年），使用Google搜索量（GSV）作为投资者关注度的代理，研究了11个行业的投资者关注度与股票收益之间的关系。

发现

我们的结果表明，对COVID-19的高度关注会对美国股票收益产生负面影响。但是，相对而言，某些领域似乎已受到越来越多的关注。这种出色的表现集中在最有可能从危机中受益（或可能损失最少）的行业以及家庭和政府的相关支出（即，消费必需品，医疗保健和IT）。在投资者正在网上搜索信息的意义上，可以用信息发现假设来解释此类结果，以便更好地了解COVID-19对相对股票行业表现的影响。

创意/价值

尽管我们并没有断言在此独特时期内投资者的关注是股票回报的唯一驱动力，但我们确实提供了证据，它有助于市场影响以及股票市场各个部门的回报异质性。