Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the behavioral and the rational explanations for the contrarian profits in the Tunisian stock market. We use the CAPM and the three-factor model of Fama and French (1993, 1996) to examine the rational explanations including the market risk, the size effect and the book to market effect. Behavioral explanations include the overconfidence bias and the investor sentiment. We use the decomposition of the trading volume advanced by Chuang and Lee (2006) to extract the factor reflecting the investor overconfidence and the ARMS index to measure the investor sentiment. These two variables are included in the three-factor model of Fama and French (1993, 1996) in an attempt to confront the rational approach with the behavioral approach. The results indicate that the contrarian profits on the Tunisian stock market are explained by the market risk, the size effect and the Book to Market effect; and that once adjusted for these three risk factors, they disappear. However, only the factor reflecting overconfidence among the two behavioral factors seems to play a role in explaining these abnormal returns.

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