Dynamic Transmission of Correlation between Investor Attention and Stock Price: Evidence from China’s Energy Industry Typical Stocks

Abstract

The relationship between investor attention and stock prices has been a topic of interest in economics. Previous studies have shown that the correlation relationship between the two changes with time. However, there are few studies to explore the time-varying evolution of the relationship, as well as the transmission characteristics under important cycles. Thus, this paper is dedicated to discover the dynamic transmission characteristics of the correlation between investor attention and stock price. We selected the typical stocks of China’s energy industry, PetroChina and Sinopec, as the research objects, as they occupy a large market share and are representative. And the transaction data and attention data are used to build investor attention indicator. In order to reproduce the dynamic transmission process of correlation at different cycles, sliding time window and complex network are applied. The results show that PetroChina and Sinopec stocks have a weakly negative correlation between investor attention and stock price from 2017 to 2018. However, from the perspective of different cycles, the correlation has time-varying characteristics. As the cycle grows, the types of transmission patterns of the five consecutive days of correlation between the two become less, but the transmission intensity between the modes increases and the transition becomes more regular and inclined. In addition, by mining the important transmission modes and main transmission paths under important periods, we find that the series modes of uncorrelated or weakly positive correlation for five consecutive days dominate the transition of modes in the networks. Also, the closed loop formed by these two important modes and related modes is the main transmission path. These findings can reveal the rules of the typical stock market in China’s energy industry and help investors with different investment cycle preferences make sound decisions.