THE EFFECT OF PRICE MAGNITUDE ON ANALYSTS' FORECASTS: EVIDENCE FROM THE LAB

Recent empirical research in accounting and finance shows that the magnitude of stock prices influences analysts' price forecasts (Roger, Roger et Schatt [2018]). In this paper, we report the results of a novel experiment where some subjects are asked to forecast future prices in a continuous double auction market. In this experiment, two successive markets take place: one where the fundamental value is a small price and one where the fundamental value is a large price. Although market prices are higher (compared to fundamental value) in small price markets than in large price markets, our results indicate that analyst subjects' forecasts are more optimistic in small price markets compared to large price markets. Analyst subjects strongly anchor on past price trends when building their price forecasts and do not mitigate subject traders' bias. Overall, our experimental findings support the existence of a small price bias deeply rooted in the human brain.