The Effect of Investor Sentiment on the Market Reactions to Earnings Restatements

Investors' sentiment often stem from held mental beliefs or information unrelated to stock value and can lead to extreme or low reactions to good or bad news, fanatical expectations such as speculative tendencies and optimistic or pessimistic optimism. Meanwhile, restatement of financial statements may be one of the factors affecting the sentiment of investors. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of investors’ sentiment on the market reactions to earnings restatements. The statistical sample consists of 119 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2012 to 2020. The results show that the willingness of investors has a significant effect on the market reaction to the earnings restatement. The results also show that the high investor sentiment, both in the presence of restatement and non-restatement, has a positive effect on market reaction, but in the presence of restatement, the effect of high investor sentiment on market reaction is less. Another result of the research indicates that the low investor sentiment has a negative effect on the market reaction in the presence of a restatement and a positive effect when there is not restatement. Therefore, it can be said that the restatement is effective on the impact of low investor sentiment on the market reaction.