Identification of the Attention Effect on Global Stock Markets

Nowadays the presence of retail investors on global stock markets shows rapid expansion. Limited cognitive resources and lack of financial skills make these investors choose financial instruments that draw their attention. This research focuses mainly on the attention effect created by ticker design and its influence on main stock trade characteristics: liquidity and returns. The dataset contains stocks traded on Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2014-2020. This market uses numeric stock ticker design that has not been extensively analyzed yet. Research shows that stock tickers in the form of numeric codes can create anomalies in trade structure on stock markets. This result is comparable with previous findings. Yet, the form and extent of its influence on Hong Kong investors is found to have some noteworthy differences with results of papers focusing on American and European markets.