DOES INVESTOR SENTIMENT PREDICT STOCK RETURNS？ THE EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE STOCK MARKET

This paper examines the proxy variables of investor sentiment in Chinese stock market carefully, and tries to construct an investor sentiment index indirectly. We use cross correlation analysis to examine lead-lag relationship between the proxy variables and HS300 index. The results show that net added accounts （NAA）, SSE share turnover （TURN）, and closed-end fund discount （CEFD） are leading variables to stock market. The average first day return of IPOs （RIPO） and relative degree of active trading in equity market （RDAT） are contemporary variables, while number of IPOs （NIPO） is a lagging variable of stock market. Using the sentiment proxy variables with most possible leading order, and forward selection stepwise regression method, the empirical results on monthly stock returns reveal that three leading proxy variables can be used to form a sentiment index. And the out of sample tests prove that this sentiment index has good predictive power of Chinese stock market, and it is robust.     

COMBINING SINGULAR SPECTRUM ANALYSIS AND PAR（p） STRUCTURES TO MODEL WIND SPEED TIME SERIES

Singular spectrum analysis （SSA） is a technique that decomposes a time series into a set of components, such as, trend, harmonics, and residuals. Leaving out the residual components and adding up the others, the time series can be smoothed. This procedure has been used to model Brazilian electricity consumption and flow series. The PAR（p）, periodic autoregressive models, has been broadly used in modelling energy series in Brazil. This paper presents an approach of this decomposition method, by fitting the PAR（p）, considering its multivariate version known as multivariate SSA （MSSA）. The method was applied to a vector of two wind speed series recorded at two locations in the Brazilian Northeast region. The obtained results, when compared to the univariate decomposition of each series, were far superior, showing that the spatial correlation between the two series were considered by MSSA decomposition stage.