Futures Market Sentiment and Institutional Investor Behavior in the Spot Market: The Emerging Market in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper investigates whether and how futures market sentiment and stock market returns heterogeneously affect the trading activities of institutional investors in the spot market in Taiwan. Our empirical results suggest that foreign investors are net sellers whenever futures market sentiment is bullish and net buyers when investor sentiment is bearish. The two types of domestic institutional investors have poor sentiment timing abilities and the price-pressure effect may account for the behavioral differences among institutional investors. In addition, all three institutional investors are momentum traders. Nevertheless, the momentum trading of foreigners is consistent with an information-based model and that of two local institutional investors, as behavior-based models suggest. This indicates that the same trading momentum strategy can lead to different outcomes for different investors, and both information- and behavior-based momentum trading can exist contemporaneously in the Taiwanese stock market.