The Impact of Financial Influencers on Stock Performance

The study aims to assess whether finfluencers’ recommendations can influence both short-term and longtermperformance by producing abnormal returns and affecting decisions to invest in tourism stocks.While existing research has explored the impact of traditional stock recommendation channels, the roleof social media influencers remains relatively understudied in emerging market settings. Data is gatheredfrom ten leading Indian financial influencers on YouTube, and stocks recommended in their most-viewed,liked, and commented shorts are analysed using the event-study methodology. A ±5-day event window,Carhart’s four-factor model for calculating average abnormal returns and cumulative average abnormalreturns, Buy and Hold abnormal returns, and the NIFTY 200 as a benchmark are used in the study tomeasure abnormal returns following influencer recommendations. The findings reveal asymmetric abnormalreturn patterns with temporal decay effects after finfluencer recommendations. There are initialpositive abnormal returns that diminish over time. These results have implications for market efficiencyand investor behaviour in digital-age financial markets. This research contributes to behavioural financeliterature by providing evidence of social media influence in the capital markets. It additionally enhancesthe literature on digital finance and offers practical insights into semi-strong form market efficiency inemerging markets.