Attention-grabbing stocks and the behavior of individual investors in Brazil

This study complements the existing literature on investor attention with three empirical findings. First, we show that low-activity individual investors are net buyers of stocks appearing on the headlines of news stories that convey no meaningful information about future returns. Second, we document that this buying pressure of some individuals following purely attention-grabbing articles leads to higher short-term returns. Finally, we provide evidence that investors who are more prone to purchase stocks after irrelevant news have poorer stock-picking performance. We hypothesize that individuals tend to narrow their choice set to alternatives that attract attention. Taken together, our findings suggest that the media, just by making some firms more salient, plays an important role in the allocation of individual investors' attention in investment activities.