In my research I am not only working on credit and credit risk but I also focus on financial stability, performance measures, commercial microfinance, and market behavior in general. I have also written academic papers on the use of news aggregators in finance. Considering the recent Chinese stock market correction, my latest paper on this topic turned out to be very timely! In the paper Byström (2014) “Language, News and Volatility” I use Google News to study the relation between news volumes in both English and Chinese and stock market volatilities in China and elsewhere. In collect more than nine million stock market-related news stories in English and (Mandarin) Chinese and find that the stock market volatility and the number of publicly available global news stories are strongly linked to each other both in English- and Chinese language. The relationship between news and volatility is weakest in mainland China, however, and a possible reason for this is that Chinese retail investors do not read traditional news, neither in Chinese nor in English.
Interestingly, the other day I read an article about Chinese authorities allegedly telling Chinese media not to use words such as “slump” and “collapse” when reporting on Chinese stock markets! To avoid volatility and panic! This is fascinating news for me who scan the media universe for exactly those words, in Chinese, when studying whether stock market-related news is related to stock market volatility or not. Maybe the authorities have also realized that news and volatility are closely associated?! But maybe they have not read my paper that shows that the link is weakest in, well, China!!!
I guess they have to find some other way to boost Chinese share prices.......